We next come to the middle acts of the play, and here again general rules are hard to find. The number of acts varies so much that nothing positive can be said except as regards fixed lengths of drama. Treating all between the first and last acts as a whole, the first certain rule that meets us is this truism:
XI. From the second to the last act the interest must be regularly increased, and each act must end in suspense, leading to the next.
Without an observance of this rule no play can ever be permanently successful as a general thing. There have been some poor plays with little interest, that have been bolstered up for a time by the force of a single character, portrayed by a peculiar actor, but in that case the play becomes a mere "star play," not amenable to the common rules, and useless out of the hands of the peculiar star who owns it. Of such are those multiform dramas, constantly varying, of which Mr. Sothern makes Lord Dundreary and Sam the central figures. The actor found he had made a lucky hit in his character, and he hired out the work of altering the play to any sort of literary hacks, so that he himself is really the creator of the plays, and when he dies they will die. In the "American Cousin," as it was first played, the interest lay entirely in Asa Trenchard, and the drama was very skilfully constructed, with ascending interest, to develop the ideal Yankee. In that part Jefferson made his first public hit. As soon as he found that Dundreary had stolen the play from its hero, Jefferson was wise enough to drop the contest between high comedy and broad farce, in which the latter must conquer when they come together. By taking up the ideal Dutchman (or rather German, as he makes it) in Rip Van Winkle, he created a part of which no one can deprive him, but which will probably die with him. No one else has succeeded with it to the same degree, and "Rip Van Winkle" stands as a model of a successful star play, wherein all the interest hangs on a single character.
It is not the intention of this article to enter into the question of what constitutes the interest of such plays as "Rip Van Winkle." To do so would be to enter into a field where everything is uncertain, and where judgment is only an expression of individual liking. The main elements of the success appear to be humor and pathos, those twin brethren of genius whose identity and individuality are frequently so inextricable from each other. Both are drawn in broad, simple lights and shadows, so that the simplest audience can take the points, while the most cultivated members of that audience are studying the delicate touches of the actor. The contrast between—but we must refrain from the digression, however tempting. We are examining the dramatic canons, and the only settled canons about which there is little doubt are those relating to construction, not to sources of interest. In the kingdom of invention genius is supreme, and amenable to no rules. Each writer must work out his own salvation.
Constructively it is obvious that the number of acts in a play must be regulated by the number of natural episodes in the action of its subject; and the perfection of its construction is tested by the liberties that can be taken with the acts and scenes. Of late years it has become the fashion to alter and remodel Shakespeare's and other old plays, by changing scenes and acts, cutting out and putting in. To an ardent worshipper of Shakespeare as read, these alterations frequently appear desecrations, but there is little question that they were and are improvements. The construction of many of Shakespeare's plays is decidedly faulty, and the nature of the improvements made by managers and actors is best illustrated when the original play unaltered is tried against the adaptation. The acting edition of "Richard III." is a familiar instance of this. Colley Cibber arranged it, he being a shrewd old actor and manager. His edition holds the stage today, and always succeeds, where the original "Richard" fails. In this matter of construction the chances are all in favor of the improvement of a work by a shrewd adapter. His attention is directed to only one thing, the successful presentation of the play. He is not an artist so much as a workman. He creates nothing, he only alters and improves. He may be perfectly incapable of creating an ideal character, while yet he can make its language more compact, can concentrate its action. Such an adapter is a skilful gardener. He cannot create the fruit tree, but he can prune it, and stimulate it to the perfection of fruit-bearing.
The French stage has been a prolific nursery for these skilful workmen, and they have managed to extract splendid successes from their work. It is by comparing their English adaptations with a simple translation of the work that one best sees the improvement. For instance, there is the "Two Orphans," with a plot and incidents so repulsive in the original that its translation failed in London in spite of its weird power. Adapted and cleansed by a clever American author, it was the great success of last year in New York, and is now running a fresh career of success. Another instance that occurs is Sardou's "Fernande." It was altered and adapted in New York by Augustin Daly, and succeeded. Another version by Mr. Schönberg, then of Wallack's, a straight translation, failed to secure a hearing in Boston, and ended in a lawsuit. This was not for want of merit in the translation, which was excellent, but, as appears from a comparison of the two plays, simply because Daly had improved on Sardou. The alterations were small, but masterly, and showed that Daly understood his business. In Sardou's play there appears a certain character, a young count (I forget his name) who comes in at the beginning of the first act, the close of the last. In the last he has some very important business to do, but he appears nowhere else. Of himself he does not aid the plot, but his last action is indispensable. In the original play also appears the Spanish Commander, a mere sketch in the first act. Daly suppressed the Count altogether, gave his best business to the Commander, and brought the latter in all through the play. The result was one good character instead of two poor ones, and indicates a canon which can be confirmed by many other instances. This canon shapes itself something like this:
XII. Concentrate the interest on few characters, and avoid numerous unimportant parts.
This canon rests on the necessities of a stock company, as those before rest on the nature of scenery and audiences. Every company has its leading man, leading lady, low comedians, old man and old woman, and those ordinary characters which all playgoers know by heart. If the play does not fit these, it will not succeed. The appreciation of this fact is one secret of the great success of Boucicault, Daly, and Lester Wallack as play writers. They know the exact capacity of their stages and companies from long experience, and write their plays to fit them. With even ordinary talents they would have a great advantage to start with over writers of greater genius, writing with vague ideas of what the manager wants. As managers they know exactly what they want, and what their companies can do. To a young writer the difficulties are all in the start, unless he be an actor, or so closely related to actors or managers as to be able to get behind the scenes at all times, and become familiar with scenery, traps, machinery, rehearsals, and all the details of thebusinessof theatricals. In former times, especially two centuries ago, the task of writing a good acting play was far easier than now. Scenery was simple, access behind the scenes easier—there was not such a wall of separation as now exists between actors and audience in a first-class city theatre. Even in those days, however, the writing of plays was confined chiefly to actors, managers, and those men of fashion who were given to haunting the green room. In the present day no amount of talent in a writer seems capable of overcoming the difficulties of technical construction of a drama. It is rare to find an author of acknowledged talent in other departments, especially in America, distinguished as a dramatist, and when one of them tries his hand at playwriting he fails, not from lack of good dialogue and literary finish, but solely from lack of knowledge of the business of the drama, the limitations of actors and scenery, and the technique of dramatic construction.
There is more hope to the American stage in the future in the production of such undeniably original if mechanically faulty plays as Bret Harte has given us in the "Two Men of Sandy Bar," than in the rapid carpentry and skilful patchwork of hosts of French adaptations, whether they run ten or five hundred nights. Our Hartes and our yet unknown writers daily coming to the front, with freshness in their hearts and brains in their heads, lack only technique and the custom of the stage, which no one can give them but the managers and actors, who shall welcome them as apprentices to learn the trade. That these latter will find it to their advantage in the end to encourage a cordial alliance between the men of the quill and the men of the sock and buskin, follows from a simple calculation. If men of confessedly small talent and low character, such as the host of lesser playwrights who furnish pabulum for the outlying theatres, can write fair acting plays, simply by using mechanical knowledge and stolen materials, it is probable that men of original talent, already experienced writers in other branches of literature, will end by producing much better and fresher work, when they are offered and have enjoyed the same technical advantages.
Frederick Whittaker.
Sunset on the Lower Don; a dim waste of gray, unending steppe, looking vaster and drearier than ever under the fast falling shadows of night; a red gleam far away to the west, falling luridly across the darkening sky and the ghostly prairie; a dead, grim silence, broken only by the plash and welter of our laboring steamer, or the shrill cry of some passing bird; an immense, crushing loneliness—the solitude not of a region whence life has died out, but of one where it has never existed. Even my three comrades, hardened as they are to all such influences, appear somewhat impressed by the scene.
"Cheerful place, ain't it?" says Sinbad, the traveller; "and the whole of southern Russia is just the same style—multiply a billiard board by five million, and subtract the cushions!"
"I wonder what the population of this district can be," muses Allfact, the statistician, looking disconsolately at his unfilled note-book. "It's almost impossible to get any reliable information in these parts. But I should think one man to three square miles must be about the proportion."
"And not a feather of game in the whole shop!" growls Smoothbore, the sportsman, with an indignant glance at his pet double barrel. "It's as bad as that desert where the old sportsman committed suicide, leaving a letter beside him to the effect that he must be firing at something, and there being nothing else to shoot, he had shot himself!"
"I'll give you one entry for your note-book, Allfact, my boy," interrupted I; "there arethirty-ninesand banks between this and Rostoff, at the head of the estuary; and the upper stream is all banks together—no navigation at all!"
"I should think not, by Jove, with that kind of thing going on!" says Smoothbore, pointing to a solitary horseman who is coolly riding across our bows with an aggravating grin, his dog following. Our outraged captain has barely time to hurl at him some pithy suggestions respecting his portion in a future life, which had better not be quoted, when there comes a tremendous bump, and we are aground once more!
Just at this moment two wild figures come dashing along the bank at full gallop, sitting so far forward as to be almost on the horse's neck—their hair tossing in the wind like a mane, their small black eyes gleaming savagely under the high sheepskin cap, their dark lean faces thrust forward like vultures scenting prey—shooting a sharp, hungry glance at us as they swoop by, in mute protest against the iron age which compels them to pass a party in distress without robbing it. These are the famous Cossacks of the Don, the best guerillas and the worst soldiers in the world; at once the laziest and most active of men—strangest of all the waifs stranded on the shore of modern civilization by the ebb of the middle ages—a nation of grown-up children, with all the virtues and all the vices of barbarism—simple, good-natured, thievish, pugnacious, hospitable, drunken savages.[K]
It takes us fully ten minutes to "poll off" again, and we have hardly done so when there comes a sound through the still air, like the moan of a distant sea; and athwart the last gleam of the sinking sun flits a cloud of wide-winged living things, shadowy, silent, unearthly, as a legion of ghosts. The wild fowl of the steppes are upon their annual migration, and for many minutes the living mass sweeps over us unbroken, orderly, and even as an army in battle array—a resemblance increased by the exertions of an active leader, who keeps darting back from his post at the head of the column, and trimming the ranks like an officer on parade.
"I wonder how many birds there are in that column," says Allfact, instinctively feeling for his note-book, as if expecting some leading bird to volunteer the desired information.
"Just like their mean tricks," mutters Smoothbore savagely. "First the game won't show at all, and then they come so thick that no fellow would be such a cad as to fire at 'em."
Night comes on, and the foul-creeping mist begins to steam up from the low banks of greasy black mud, driving us perforce into the cabin, where we speedily fall asleep on the benches along the walls—for bed-places there are none. About midnight I begin to dream that I am a Christian martyr in the reign of Diocletian, "in the act" (as Paddy would, say) of being burned alive; and I awake to find it all but true. The fact is, the steward, with a thoroughly Russian love of overheating, has put wood enough into the stove to roast an ox; and there is nothing for it but to bolt on deck again, where we remain for the rest of the night.
The panorama of the deck in the early morning forms an ethnological study hard to match, except perchance by the Yokohama packet steaming out of 'Frisco, or a "coolie boat" coming over from Demerara to Trinidad. Gaunt, aquiline Cossacks, and portly Germans, and bumfaced Tartars; red-capped, broad-visaged, phlegmatic Turks; slim, graceful Circassians, beautiful with all the sleek tiger-like beauty of their gladiator race; sallow, beetle-browed Russians, and black-robed, dark-eyed, melancholy Jews. We haveonePersian on board—a lanky, hatchet-faced rogue, half buried under a huge black sheepskin cap not unlike a tarred beehive. He smokes one half the day and sleeps the other half, and is only once betrayed into any show of emotion. This occurs at one of our halting places on the second day, when he comes on board again grinning and whooping like a madman, having succeeded (as I learn when his excitement subsides) in cheating a Cossack out of a halfpenny.
But the appearance of the Russianmujiks(peasants), and the manner in which they curl themselves up anywhere and anyhow, and sleep the sleep of the just with their heads in baskets and their feet in pools of dirty water, baffles all description. A painter would revel in the third-class deck about sunrise, when the miscellaneous hash of heads and limbs begins to animate itself, like a coil of snakes at the approach of spring—when mothers of families look anxiously about for the little waddling bundles of clothes that are already thrusting their round faces and beady black eyes into every place where they oughtnotto go; and when brawny peasants, taking their neighbor's elbow out of their mouth, and their knee out of their neighbor's stomach, make three or four rapid dips, like a drinking duck, to any village church that may be in sight, and then fall to with unfailing zest to the huge black loaf which seems to be their only baggage. The whole thing is like a scene in a fairy tale:
There was an old captain that lived in a "screw."He had so many passengers he didn't know what to do;They'd got nary baggage but one loaf of bread.They squatted round the funnel, andthatwas their bed.
As we move southward, our surroundings alter very perceptibly. A genial warmth and a rich summer blue replace the cold gray sky of the north; the banks begin to rise higher, and to clothe themselves with thick patches of bush, and even trees, instead of the coarse prairie grass; while at every halting place the little wooden jetty is heaped with perfect mounds of splendid grapes, sold at three cents per pound, by men in shirtsleeves—phenomena which, to us who are fresh from the furred wrappings and snow-blocked streets of Moscow, have a rather bewildering effect. But the most striking sight is (to our friend Allfact at least) the huge masses of coal which now fuel the steamer instead of the split logs of the Volga.
"You see Russia's richer than her neighbors think," remark I. "On the Don alone there are 16,000 square miles of the finest anthracite, which leaves only two per cent. of ashes in burning."
"Sixteen thousand square miles!" cries the statistician, whipping out his note-book. "Why on earth doesn't she use it, then, instead of destroying all that valuable timber?"
"Well, you see, the railways are not completed yet; but when they are I can promise you that Russia will cut out England altogether in supplying Constantinople and the Levant."
One by one the little villages slip by us: Alexandrosk, the first sign of which is the glitter of its gilded church-tower; Nikolaievo, with its black marble monument to the late Crown Prince; Konstantirovskoë, the birthplace of Prince Potemkin, brightest and most worthless of Russian favorites, who "lived like an emperor and died like a dog." They are all vary much of one pattern: substantial log-cabins, curiously painted, with little palisaded gardens in front, and red-shirted men sitting smoking at their doors, alternating with little wickerwork hovels daubed with mud, which look very much like hampers left behind by a monster picnic. Gangs of lean dogs (the pest of every Cossack village) are sniffing hungrily about, while scores of sturdy wenches, with berry-brown arms and feet, and sunburnt children clothed only in short pinafores lined with dirt, run to stare at the wonderful fire-breathing vessel as she comes gliding in.
The sun is just dipping below the horizon as we reach Semi-Karakorskaya, and anchor for the night as usual; for to navigate the Lower Don in the dark is beyond the power of any pilot afloat. Here a Cossack official,[L]whose acquaintance we have made on board, proposes to us to land and be presented to the "Ataman," or chief of the tribe, with the certainty of seeing something worth looking at. The offer is joyfully accepted, and five minutes later we are scrambling up the steep, crumbling bank—in the course of which feat Allfact slips and rolls bodily down into the river.
"There's something for the notebook at last, old boy!" cries Smoothbore spitefully. "Write down that you noticea great falling offin this part of the country!"
To find one's way into a Cossack village at night is almost as hopeless as the proverbial hunt for a needle in a haystack. The whole country seems to consist of a series of carefully dug pitfalls, into which we tumble one over the other, like fish out of a net; and our final approach to the village is only to be guessed by the yells of the dogs, which come about us with such zeal as to necessitate some vigorous cudgelling, and a shower of trenchant Russian oaths, in which our leader, thanks to his official character, seems to be quite a proficient. At length a few lights, which appear to start from the very ground under our feet, announce that we are among houses—underground ones, it is true, but houses still. Then the first glimmer of the rising moon lights up a row of log-cabins on either side, and the abyss of half-dried mud between them; and at last, following our leader, we enter one of those immeasurable courtyards in which the Cossack heart delights, pass through a low doorway, ascend a creaking, ladder-like stair, and, entering a small room at the head of it, find ourselves in the presence of two men—one old and decrepit, the other in the prime of life. The younger is the Ataman himself; the elder is his father, an old soldier of the first campaigns of Nicholas.
Seen by the dim light of the lamp that stands on the rough-hewn table, the "interior" is sufficiently picturesque: the heavy crossbeams of the roof, the skins that cover the walls, intermingled with weapons of every kind, from the long Cossack lance to the light carabine which is fast superseding it; the fresh complexions and Western costume of the English party, contrasting strangely enough with the commanding figure and dark, handsome face of our host, in his picturesque native dress and high boots; the long white beard and vacant, wondering eyes of the ancient soldier; the picture of the Ataman's patron saint in the corner, with its little oil light burning before it, and a pious cockroach making a laborious pilgrimage around its gilt frame; and, through the narrow, loophole-like window, a glimpse of the great waste outside, lit by fitful gleams of moonlight.
Hospitality has been a Cossack virtue since the day that Bogdan Khmelnitski gave meat from his own dish to the prisoners whom he was about to slaughter; and we have hardly time to exchange greetings with our new friends when we are set down to a plentiful meal of rye bread, the splendid grapes of the Don, and "nardek"—a rich syrup strained from the rind of the watermelon, not unlike molasses both in appearance and flavor.
The "bread and salt" (as the Russians technically call it) being despatched, my three comrades, with the native official as interpreter, fasten upon the Ataman, while I devote myself to the old soldier, and begin to question him on the Danubian campaign of 1826. It is a sight to see how the worn old face lights up, and how the sunken eyes flash at the sound of the familiar name; and he plunges at once into his story. Seldom is it given to any man to hear such a tale as that to which I listen for the next half hour, told by one of its chief actors. Weary struggles through miles of hideous morass—men dropping from sheer exhaustion, with the wheels of the heavy artillery ploughing through their living flesh; vultures haunting the long march of death to tear the still quivering limbs of the fallen; soldiers, in the rage of hunger, feeding upon the corpses of their comrades—all the hideous details of that terrible campaign, told in a quiet, matter-of-course way, which makes them doubly horrible. My impromptu Xenophon is still in full swing when high above the clamor of tongues rises a sound from without, which nothing on earth can match save the war whoop of the Western Indian—the shrill, long-drawn "Hourra!" of the Cossack, which made many a veteran grenadier's stout heart grow chill within, as it came pealing over the endless snows of 1812. We rush headlong to the outer door, and this is what we see:
In the centre of the courtyard, under the full splendor of the moonlight, stand some twenty tall, sinewy figures, in the high sheepskin cap, wide trousers, and huge knee-high boots of the Cossack irregular. They salute the Ataman as he appears by drawing their long knives and waving them in the air, again uttering their shrill war cry; and then begin to move in a kind of measured dance, advancing and retreating by turns, to the sound of a low, dirge-like chant. Presently the music grows quicker, the motion faster and fiercer; the dancers dart to and fro through each other's ranks, brandishing their weapons, turning, leaping, striking right and left—acting in terribly lifelike pantomime the fury of a deadly battle. Seen in the heart of this great solitude, with the cold moon looking silently down upon it, this whirl of wild figures, and gleaming weapons, and dark, fierce faces, all eyes and teeth, has a very grim effect; and even Sinbad's seasoned nerves quiver slightly as the dancers at length join hands, and, whirling round like madmen, burst forth with the deep, stern chorus with which their ancestors swept the coasts of the Black Sea five hundred years ago:
Our horses have trodden the steep Kavkaz (Caucasus);Of the Krim (Crimea) we have taken our share;And the way that we went is dabbled with blood,To show thatwehave been there!
The volume of sound (stern and savage to the last degree, but yet full of a weird, unearthly melody) fills the whole air like the rush of a storm; and now, the Cossack blood being thoroughly heated, the play suddenly turns to earnest. The nearest dancer, a tall, handsome lad with a heavy black moustache, suddenly fells his next neighbor with a tremendous blow between the eyes, which Heenan himself might have applauded. The next moment the conqueror falls in his turn before a crushing right-hander from hisvis-à-vis; and in an instant the whole band are at it hammer and tongs—apparently without "sides," order, or object of any kind, except the mere pleasure of thrashing and being thrashed. There is little science among the combatants, who deliver their blows in a slashing, round-hand style that would agonize a professional "bruiser"; but every blow dealt by those brawny arms leaves its mark, and the whole company speedily look as if they had been taking part in an election.
"By Jove!" says Smoothbore, with considerable feeling; "it does one good to see a real good fight so far away from home!"
"You'd see plenty such in Central Russia," answer I. "Two villages often turn out to fight, just as we'd turn out to play cricket.[M]They call it 'Koolatchni boi.'"
But Sinbad, being a man of humane temper, thinks that the sport has gone far enough, and appeals to the Ataman to stop it. One word from the all-powerful chief suffices to part the combatants; and, a messenger being despatched for some corn-whiskey, they are speedily chinking glasses as merrily as if nothing had happened. I am standing unsuspectingly in their midst when suddenly the whole company rush upon me as one man, and I find myself lifted in their arms and tossed bodily into the air six times in succession, amid yells of applause, to which all the previous uproar is as nothing.[N]Next they pounce upon Allfact, who, in his thirst for new ideas, submits readily enough; but Sinbad and Smoothbore take to their heels at once, and are with difficulty pacified by our host and his venerable father, who are looking on from the doorway.
This closes the entertainment, for it is now nearly midnight, and we are to start again at sunrise. We take a cordial leave of our new friends, and depart, laden with bunches of grapes which are somewhat difficult to carry conveniently.
"I wonder why they tossed me up like that?" muses Allfact, as we grope our way down to the shore.
"Why!" answers Smoothbore. "Why, to take ariseout of you, to be sure."
David Ker.
[K]The Cossack is often erroneously classed by untravelled writers with the native Russian, from whom he is as distinct as the Circassian or the Tartar.
[K]The Cossack is often erroneously classed by untravelled writers with the native Russian, from whom he is as distinct as the Circassian or the Tartar.
[L]The "Army of the Don," though now an integral part of Russia, is still officered to a great extent by its own people.
[L]The "Army of the Don," though now an integral part of Russia, is still officered to a great extent by its own people.
[M]I remember one such battle near Moscow, in October, 1809, in which more than a thousand men took part.
[M]I remember one such battle near Moscow, in October, 1809, in which more than a thousand men took part.
[N]This singular compliment (a universal one among the Cossacks) is probably a relic of the old custom of raising their "Kosbevoi," or head chief, on a shield when elected.
[N]This singular compliment (a universal one among the Cossacks) is probably a relic of the old custom of raising their "Kosbevoi," or head chief, on a shield when elected.
THE WILLS OF THE TRIUMVIRATE.
"Nothing so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections of mankind," says Sir William Blackstone, "as the right of property." Sure it is, that society palpitates whenever a great estate passes to a new owner, disclosing its vastness in the act of transit. Perhaps for this fact we may find another reason in Blackstone, where he says: "There is no foundation in nature why the son should have the right to exclude his fellow creatures from a determinate spot of ground because his father had done so before him, or why the occupier of a particular field or of a jewel, when lying on his death-bed, and no longer able to maintain possession, should be entitled to tell the rest of the world which of them should enjoy it after him." But since the law, to reward thrift and avoid strife, has established this artificial right of disposal, the disparities of fortune, on these signal occasions of transfer, always set us to pondering.
Vanderbilt, last of the three monstrously rich men of New York who have died within three years, furnishes in his will the now tripled evidence of a new ambition in American Crœsuses—an aim to keep their fortunes rolling and greatening for several generations in the exact paths where they were started. Supposing that Mr. Stewart's bequest to Judge Hilton was designed to purchase his entrance into the dry goods firm, we should have a common aim of the triumvirate, since each has put a chosen man into his shoes, as if with the hope to live on in this successor, like Mordecai in "Deronda." The master passion of acquisition is thus striving to outwit death. Astor and Vanderbilt found their second selves in favorite sons; childless Stewart could only take his confidential agent. Each conceivably died in the hope that a successor so carefully selected and endowed would in turn hand over the bulk of his gigantic wealth, in its original channel, to some steward chosen with equal care; so that ages hence the Astor fortune still in houses, the Stewart fortune still in trade, the Vanderbilt fortune still in railways, might flourish under successive guardians, faithful to their tradition and training. The John Jacob, the Cornelius, the Alexander of the past has been blessed with the vision of his millions multiplying as he would have them multiply, and haply has dreamed of accomplishing by his own foresight an entail which he could not create under the laws.
If this be the new tendency that American life is called upon to face, it is at least not hard to account for. The thirst for posthumous fame which inflamed old heroes and poets rages still in days when greatness collects rents, sells dry goods, and corners stocks. And after all, what is there stranger in struggling to prolong after death one's imperious railroad sway, his landlord laws, his massive trade monopolies, than in slaving out one's childless old age in the hard rut of traffic, in order to turn five surplus millions into ten?
To Dives, after a life of accretion, the prospect of frittering his wealth into fragments must be painful. Heirs will waste what he toiled to win. That fortune which grew so great while he rolled it on turns out, after all, but a snowball, to be broken apart and trampled by careless spoilers when he is gone. There are, to be sure, hard-headed philosophers who contemplate coolly the dispersion of their hoard. I remember from boyhood that when somebody rallied Squire Anthony Briggs, of Milldale, on his veteran vigilance in money-getting, saying, "Your children will spend as fast as you have made it," stanch old Tony answered: "If they get as much pleasure from spending my money as I have in making it, they are welcome." But with prodigious fortunes like Astor's and Vanderbilt's, the instinct of accumulation which increases what is already preposterously great may struggle to keep it accumulating after death. When Bishop Timothy sonorously declares from the desk that we brought nothing into this world, neither may we carry anything out, Crœsus in the pew below takes this as a very solemn warning to him—warning to secure betimes the utmost posthumous control of his money that the laws allow. Dombey's soul is not wrapt up in the miser's clutching love of money, but in the money-getting institution of Dombey & Son; and not only in the Dombey & Son of to-day, but the Dombeys & Sons of centuries hence. To found a dry-goods dynasty, a line of railway kings, a house of landed Astors, its owner puts the bulk of his vast wealth into a single hand—in thatexegi monumentumspirit common to bard and broker, soldier and salesman.Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei vitabit Libitinam, the millionaire may then triumphantly say.
On the other hand, the Cornells and Licks of our day, wonderfully numerous, have made America renowned by their public uses of wealth, either in lifetime gift or testamentary bequest; and this devotion of private fortune to the common weal is fostered by the observed independence of each generation in pursuing its own mode of life without regard to the customs of ancestors.
But the testamentary aim of the richest trio that ever lived in America was to escape this national trait of beneficence; to substitute the perpetuity of one's business monopoly or family trade; to struggle against any serious division of the enormous fortune, even at the cost of preferences among equal children; to spare not one dollar out of fifty millions for the public; to heap the gigantic hoard, save what for other legatees propriety demands, on some "chip of the old block" or business "bird of a feather." This purpose also influenced their lives. "Magnificence is the decency of the rich," but little magnificence marked the lives of those three rich New Yorkers. Powerful, self-willed, all-conquering they were, but hardly magnificent. Unprecedented and incredible thing in America, neither Stewart nor Vanderbilt left one poor dollar of his fifty or sixty millions to any municipal or charitable purpose. Filled with his posthumous business plans, neither cared for New York as Girard cared for Philadelphia and Hopkins for Baltimore. True, each of the Gotham triumvirate endowed in life an institution of public beneficence—Astor his library, Vanderbilt his college away in Tennessee, Stewart his hotel for women. It is further true that men who, like Vanderbilt and Stewart, give sure pay for many years to thousands of employees, are benefactors. But to do this, and then to leave besides some testamentary memorial to the city where one has heaped up his wealth, has hitherto been the aim of the rich men of America. Girard not only founded his orphan college, ornament and pride of Philadelphia, but left great sums to beautify and improve the city by removing wooden houses and widening thoroughfares. Stewart, scrupulously just in business dealings, deserves public gratitude as the apostle of "one price," and as the cash-selling reformer who protected prudent folk from the higher prices caused in trade by the allowances for bad debts; but, this apart, in the will of Stewart and the will of Stephen Girard, what a world-wide difference of public spirit! That one act of grace that might have tempered his forgetfulness toward New York—the gift of his picture gallery for public uses—even this act Stewart did not do. The contrast is startling between the bequests of an Astor, a Stewart, a Vanderbilt, and those of a Girard, a Peabody, and a Johns Hopkins.
THE DUEL AND THE NEWSPAPERS.
Barring the two services, doctors used, I fancy, to be the great duellists among professional men. And still, ever and anon, some irascible Sawbones rushes to the ten-paced turf, where, though he be spectacled or pot-bellied, those disadvantages rarely calm his blood-letting rage. But editors are the modern magnates of the code; not because they thirst for gore, but only because the guild of M. Paul de Cassagnac is professionally liable to give offence, and hence to be dragged to the field of glory and to die with boots on. I once saw a statement that the famous fighting editor of the "Pays" had taken part in eighteen duels, "besides having a man to kill next month"; and he was greatly coveted by a Missouri paper that had been losing its writers in street encounters too rapidly for convenience.
The newspapers have emptied their vials of wrath or ridicule upon Mr. Bennett for his duel with young May: now in horror over his resort to the measured ground, and anon in scorn at the bloodless result. Nevertheless, had Mr. Bennett failed to fight that duel, he and his newspaper would have been butts during his lifetime for the shafts of half the editorial archers of the land. A noble refusal to resent the public insult would have been misrepresented with ingenious malice, in the hope to disgrace him and ruin his property. In answer to "Herald" arguments on disputed questions, the unresented cowhiding of its owner would have been paraded by rival sheets. Rarely in business or political controversy would they have failed to taunt him with cowardice. Life would have been a burden to him; and if the consciousness of having refrained in that instance from breaking the laws of man and of God could have saved him from desperation, it would not have been for lack of the sneers of newspapers continually fomenting and reviving public contempt against him. Sometimes a man is goaded by such stings into a second duel, after having been able to resist fighting the first; or else he puts an end to a life which has been made unendurable through constant imputations. Let those who doubt what would have occurred recall the instantaneous newspaper sarcasms, after the street assault, on the question "whether a man is answerable for hereditary tendencies to receive a public cowhiding without resenting it." The satirist who eggs on a duel in that fashion feels justified afterward in invoking public contempt for the man that fights it.
What is the upshot of this comment? That duelling is ever commendable? Most emphatically no. Duelling, branded by the law, is also now so branded in public opinion that it would be waste of words to anathematize it. But what is suggested by the venom of some of the press writers is that they have never put themselves into the place of a man who, with the average sensitiveness to personal affront, and with thorough-going physical courage, had also a clear perception of the remorselessness of his journalistic rivals. From some of them he could expect no more mercy than from the red gentry of the plains. Let those who are sending their arrows into Mr. Bennett ask themselves whether they are wholly sure that in his position, with his family history behind them, they would have done otherwise after the street assault. At any rate, neither duelling nor that cowardly substitute, shooting down an unprepared man who has done some wrong, will be driven out of fashion by bringing newspaper taunts of "showing the white feather" against those who fail to resort to such lawlessness.
THE INDUSTRY OF INTERVIEWERS.
It was a quarrel totally apart from newspaper affairs, as we all know, that carried the editor of the "Herald" to the field of honor at Marydell. Indeed, Mr. Bennett's conduct before and after the duel was so "unjournalistic" that the Philadelphia reporters are said to have sent him a letter, while he tarried in that city, protesting that a gentleman so well aware of the "usages of the profession" ought to submit to be interviewed. But the physician does not always swallow his own drugs. Mr. Bennett, on receiving the missive, remarked that it was "all right," and remained uninterviewed, thus setting an awful example to the community.
A public attack by a man armed with a cowhide upon another not so armed is hardly a feat that excites admiration, while the affair at Marydell was in no sense such reparation for the previous insult as in common parlance to be thought "satisfaction." But one feature of the Bennett-May quarrel not unpleasant to read was the outwitting of the news-gatherers and their resulting desperation. "Had the duel taken place on the Canada border the parties to it could hardly have evaded our extensive arrangements to report it," said one journal after the affair, in a somewhat lugubrious and yet self-vindicating strain. The promptness of Mr. Bennett's movements, and his skill in throwing the reporters off the scent, lest the duel might be stopped, were hard blows to the newspapers. But theirs was no dishonorable defeat—it was one of the fraternity that beat them. Even the device of giving imaginary accounts of the battle in order to draw out the true one was unsuccessful until Mr. Bennett had sailed for Europe.
On the May side there was a trifling gain for the interviewers, but not much. Dr. May, senior, seems to have been condemned to a copious acquaintance with journalists; for, though in knowing Mr. Bennett he had already perhaps known one too many of them, his house appears to have been overrun, after the Fifth avenue assault, with the fraternity, who, in the "strict discharge of professional duty," swarmed multitudinously upon him. At least, one morning the "Tribune" said:
The May mansion in West Nineteenth street was a sealed book to reporters yesterday, and the door was promptly shut in the face of those who were recognized as newspaper inquirers by the negro in charge. Dr. May has made no secret of his anger at the reports, too accurately drawn, of his appearance of anxiety and alarm when expecting bad news from his son, and will have nothing to say to representatives of the press.
Here, it will be observed, is a claim to something professional in the very aspect of the "newspaper inquirer" whereby the sable guardian of the portal may know him well enough to take the responsibility of slamming the door in his face. Again, we observe here a tribute to the interviewer's skill; for, prior to the duel, Dr. May, though politely presenting himself, could give no news; but his lynx-eyed visitors had gathered from the very attitude, tone, and look of their host the material for an item as picturesque as any tidings. So the besieged householder, as we have seen, took refuge in total eclipse, leaving only a "negro in charge" to determine the status of his callers.
Yet the most discerning negro in charge sometimes proves a weak barrier against invasion. The trained interviewer can take a protean shape, and introduce himself under disguise of the most sympathetic friendship or the most urgent business. Sometimes he is the picture of respectful woe, or anon it is he who has a favor to confer by bringing news of pressing importance. Close and private indeed must be that conference whose secrets he cannot worm out. He gave to the public the "family scene of astonishment at the opening of the Vanderbilt will" the very morning after the affair occurred. Should moral borings fail, he can resort to material ones, as when, a few months since, he cut a hole in a hotel floor, to apply his ear to, over the room where a Congressional committee sat in secret session, being detected only by the unlucky plaster falling among the astonished statesmen below. He is the animal of the fable, who, having once "got in," cannot be got out until ready to go. In our war times some commanders looked upon him, coming to camp in never so fair a guise, with the misgivings of the hapless Trojan regarding the wooden horse; and it is said of Baron Von Werther that he "treats as an enemy all newspaper correspondents, even though they have the best personal introductions to him." Such fears of warriors and diplomats, who quail before no ordinary foes, are tributes to the interviewer's prowess.
It must go hard but he gets something from the sullenest and most refractory customer. We have seen his harvests at the May mansion, when baffled by real ignorance on the part of his victim; hence we may guess whether he is to be checked by a mere wilful purpose to conceal, or the whim to keep a matter private. At very worst, his own description of his rebuff will be humorous and piquant. Often do we have an entertaining half column beginning, "Our reporter waited upon," etc., and, after descriptions of household ornaments, personal dress, and so on, ending in this way:
Ques.—You say, then, that you can give me no information whatever?Ans.(snappishly)—As I have already told you a dozen times, no information whatever.Ques.—And that is positive and final?Ans.(savagely)—Positive and final.Here our reporter took his leave, wishing the gentleman a very good morning, to which politeness of our reporter the uncommunicative gentleman only distantly bowed.
Ques.—You say, then, that you can give me no information whatever?
Ans.(snappishly)—As I have already told you a dozen times, no information whatever.
Ques.—And that is positive and final?
Ans.(savagely)—Positive and final.
Here our reporter took his leave, wishing the gentleman a very good morning, to which politeness of our reporter the uncommunicative gentleman only distantly bowed.
But these defeats form a rare experience of the interviewer, who even then continues to pluck victory (that is to say, an item) out of their jaws. His ordinary career is a round of triumph which has made him a leading figure in the portrait gallery of modern society. I wonder that Mr. Daly does not introduce it at length into some of his comedies of American life. Drawn faithfully, and personated by Mr. James Lewis, the dramatized interviewer would be a wealth of pleasure.
Philip Quilibet.
THE FORCE OF CRYSTALLIZATION.
The old story of a bombshell filled with water and left to burst by freezing, upon the plains of Abraham, near Quebec, may now be superseded as an illustration of the power of frost. The men at a Western dockyard were surprised to find one morning that the paddle-wheel of a steamer in the dry dock had fallen from the shaft, and was broken in two pieces. The hub of the wheel, about fifteen inches long, was slightly hollowed out at the centre to admit of its being slipped on without difficulty over any uneven portion of the shaft-end. This recess was full of water when the boat was placed in the dock, and the keying had been so close that the liquid—about a pailful—was exposed to the frost. As the water congealed under the sharp wintry atmosphere of the night it expanded and burst asunder the five-inch walls of iron, and the broken wheel fell with a crash.
FROZEN NITRO-GLYCERINE.
Two accidents, both fatal, have lately occurred from the use of nitro-glycerine for blasting. In one case some frozen cartridges were recklessly placed in the oven of a stove, while others were held up to the fire. That an explosion should take place under such circumstances is not surprising, and comment is unnecessary. The other explosion partook more clearly of the nature of an accident. A well digger, living near Sing Sing, had buried a can of nitro-glycerine in his garden for future use; and while digging it up, January 18, his pick struck the can, ignition followed, and he was blown to pieces. No doubt the can was frozen, thus proving anew that frozen nitro-glycerine is more dangerous to handle, though not so powerful in its effects, as in the liquid form. This is singular behavior and contrary to theory. In general terms, explosion may be defined as the result which takes place when a portion of the nitro-glycerine is raised to a given temperature. Now, to produce this temperature by the friction resulting from the blow of a pick is manifestly more difficult with frozen than with tepid liquid. In the former case some of the heat produced would be absorbed by the liquefaction of the solid substance, and therefore there would be less available for producing the temperature of explosion. But, plain as this proposition is, there must be some unknown condition, for it has been frequently observed in practical work that nitro-glycerine is never so dangerous to handle as when frozen. This result, however, is directly opposed to the experiments of Beckerhinn, of Vienna, who lately experimented to decide this question. He placed a thin layer of nitro-glycerine on a Bessemer steel anvil, and a weight of about five pounds, having a small hardened steel face, was dropped upon it. The height to which it was necessary to raise this weight in order to produce explosion determined the comparative delicacy of the explosive. With tepid nitro-glycerine explosion took place when the weight dropped about 31 inches (0.78 metres), but with frozen liquid the fall had to be increased to about 85 inches (2.13 metre). Thus the experimental results are opposed to the acknowledged experience of practical work in the hands of common laborers. Mr. Beckerhinn found the density of the solid nitro-glycerine to be 1.735, that of the liquid 1.599, and the average melting heat to be 33.54 heat units. Thus the explosive shrinks about one-twelfth in crystallizing.
ENGLISH GREAT GUNS.
The largest rifled cannon in the world is a 100-ton gun, made for the Italian government by Sir William Armstrong's firm. But the English government is preparing to outdo this, and already has the plans ready for a gun of 164 tons. It hesitates, in fact, between a weapon of this size and one of 200 tons, a mass of metal which its shops are now perfectly able to handle. The meaning of the term—200-ton gun—is simply this: a tube of iron and steel of that weight, fifty feet long, having a calibre of 20 inches, and firing a shot of 3,500 or 4,000 pounds weight, with a charge of 800 pounds of powder! The human capacity for astonishment has grown perforce as the successive steps have been taken from the guns of ten and twenty tons to these weapons, which must remain huge whatever further advances are made. The character of warfare with them is best indicated by the fact that the 200-ton gun must be handled entirely by machinery. The advent of these unmanageable weapons is signalized by the invention of a hydraulic apparatus for working them. The vast shock of the recoil from the bursting of thirty-two kegs of powder—enough to throw down 1,200 tons of rock in mining—is taken up by a cylinder pierced with small holes. These holes are capped with valves, held down with a pressure of fifty tons to the square inch. When the force of the recoil exceeds this the water is forced out of the holes and the recoil thus taken up in work done. The breech of the piece is supported on a hydraulic ram, the elevation of which depresses the muzzle of the gun below the level of the deck, and brings it exactly in line with an iron tube carrying the sponge. This is run up to the base of the powder chamber, a deluge of water rushes from apertures in its head, and the bore is completely cleaned out and every spark of remaining fire extinguished. The rammer then retires, the sponge is taken off, and the powder hoisted by tackle to the muzzle, whence the rammer pushes it home, and then does the same for the shot. The shot and cartridge, weighing together about 1,350 pounds, are stored on little iron carriages, every charge in the magazine having its own carriage. The loading finished, the gun is raised, pointed, the port flies open, and the discharge immediately follows. What the result of the blow from such a projectile would be is not to be imagined. It is acknowledged, however, that in the struggle for mastery the gun has beaten defensive armor. No ship has been built to stand the shock of a 3,500 pound bolt moving at the velocity of 1,300 or 1,500 feet a second.
EAR TRUMPETS FOR PILOTS.
Prof. Henry has turned his attention to the discovery of means for increasing the distinctness of sound signals at sea. It is a very large hearing trumpet, projecting mouth foremost from the top of the pilot-house of a steamboat. But he soon found that a single hearing trumpet would not answer the purpose, for though it greatly augmented the perceptive power of the ear, it destroyed the capacity of that organ for distinguishing the direction of sound. For this purpose two ears are necessary. Prof. Henry then made use of two hearing trumpets, the axes of which are separated about 30 inches. An india-rubber tube proceeding from the axis of each is placed so as to terminate in the ear of the observer—one in each ear. With this instrument the audibility of the sound was very much increased, but as a means of determining the direction of the source of sound, it was apparently of little use. For this purpose the unaided ear is sufficient, provided the head is placed above all obstructions and away from reflections.
HOT WATER IN DRESSING ORES.
We have before alluded to the investigations made to ascertain the reason why clay settles more rapidly in solutions of some salts than in pure water, a fact which appears contrary to reason, since it might be inferred that the greater the specific gravity the more buoyant the fluid. But the fact is abundantly confirmed, and it is likely to find important application some day in the arts. The property which every substance has of sinking through a fluid of less density than its own forms the basis upon which nine-tenths of the gold and copper, and probably six-tenths of the silver produced in this country, is extracted from its ores. It is the foundation of the art of ore dressing, one of the most important parts of metallurgy. Anything which increases the rapidity and thoroughness of the process may have a fortunate application in this art. Mr. Ramsay, of the Glasgow university laboratory, thinks the property in question depends upon the varying absorption of heat by the different solutions. When water containing suspended clay is heated the rapidity of settling is proportional to the heat of the water. This mode of accelerating the movement of fine sediments in water is perhaps more easily applied than the solution of caustic soda or potash, or of common salt. Rittinger, by a mathematical discussion of the principles which control the downward movement of solid particles in an ascending stream of water, showed that the separation of light from heavy minerals is more complete with solutions of density greater than that of water than in water alone. He found a solution of 1.5 sp. gr. extremely favorable. If the addition of heat will increase the effect of such a solution, it may become possible to separate, by means of the continuous jig, minerals so near in specific gravity as barite and galena. This whole subject of ore dressing is one of the most important questions connected with the future of mineral industry in America. In the Mississippi valley everything connected with metallurgy, from the fuels to the finished metal, will one day be closely dependent on it.
OCEAN ECHOES.
Prof. Henry communicated to the National Academy at Philadelphia his latest researches into the subject of sound, and among them an explanation of the echo observed on the water. This echo he had formerly been inclined to attribute to reflection from the crests of the waves. Tyndall holds that it is due to reflection from strata of air at different densities. Prof. Henry's present explanation is that this echo is produced by the reflection of the sound wave from the uniform surface of the water. The effect of the echo is produced by the fact that the original sound wave is interrupted. It has what the learned Professor callsshadows, produced by the intervention of some obstacle in its path. Sound is not propagated in parallel, but in diverging lines, and yet there are some cases where what may be called a "sound shadow" is produced. For instance, let a fog-signal be placed at or near water level on one side of an island that has a conical elevation. Then the signal will be heard distinctly by a vessel on the opposite side of the island at a distance of three miles. But when the vessel sails toward the island (the signal being on the opposite side), the sound will be entirely lost when the distance is reduced to a mile, and in any smaller distance it is not recovered. In this case the station of the vessel at the shorter distance is in the "sound shadow." The termination of that shadow is the point at which the diverging beams of sound, passing over the crest of the island, bend down and reach the surface of the water. The formation of the sound echo may be explained by this extreme divergence of the sound waves, for it is rational to suppose that at a great distance from the source of sound some of the dispersed waves will reach the water surface at such an angle as to be reflected back to the hearer. This was well illustrated by an experiment made to test Tyndall's theory. A steam siren was pointed straight upward to the zenith, but no echo from the zenith was heard, though the presence of a cloud from which a few raindrops fell certified the presence of air strata of different densities. But, strange to say, an echowasheard from every part of the horizon, half of which was land and half water. The only explanation of this fact is that the sound waves projected upward were so dispersed as to reach the earth's surface at a certain distance, and at that point some of them had curled over and assumed a direction that caused their reflection back to the siren.
THE DELICACY OF CHEMISTS' BALANCES.
In making chemical balances for fine work the beam is made in the truss form to prevent the bending which takes place even under such small loads as an ounce or two. Prof. Mendeleef has a balance that will turn with one-thousandth of a grain, when each pan is loaded with 15,000 grains. This extreme sensibility is obtained by the use of micrometer scales and cross threads at the end of the beam, these being observed by means of a telescope. Of course one weighing with this complicated apparatus occupies a long time. In most balances the beam rests on steel knife edges; but a maker who has lately obtained celebrity makes his supports of pure rock crystal. The steel edges can be seen with the naked eye; the quartz edges cannot be seen even with a magnifying glass. One writer on this subject thinks that with these perfect crystal edges, with an inflexible girder beam, a short beam giving quick vibrations, and a sensitiveness that can be increased by screwing up the centre of gravity, there can hardly be a practical limit to the smallness of the weight that will turn the beam. The amount of motion may be very small, but if this can be observed, the limit of possible accuracy is very much extended.
GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE DEAD.
What the population of European countries was a hundred years ago it would be hard to tell with accuracy; but the nations have doubled and trebled in strength within the century. Sanitary precautions have increased in importance, and the very noticeable movement in regard to social hygiene which now possesses English society is perhaps due in part to the obvious dangers to which thirty million human beings are subjected when living together on such a small area. The medical officer for Birkenhead has pointed out that it may be necessary for the government authorities to take more complete charge of the dead as a possible source of infection. He says that the intelligence of deaths from infectious diseases now furnished by local registrary would be much more useful than it is as a means for limiting the spread of disease if the medical officer were vested with further powers in respect to the infected dead body. At present neither the medical officer nor any one else has any power to order the immediate removal of an infected body, and those in charge of it might do what they liked with it. He advocated the necessity of power being given to medical officers to order the immediate removal of the infected bodies to a public mortuary and their speedy burial.
MICROSCOPIC LIFE.
Dr. Leidy lately described to the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia an encounter for life which he witnessed between two microscopic animalcules. The two creatures were respectively 1-625th and 1-200th of an inch in diameter. On the morning of August 27, from some mud adhering to the roots of sphagnum, obtained the day previously in a nearly dried-up marsh at Bristol, Pennsylvania, he obtained a drop of material for examination with the microscope. After a few moments he observed an amoeba verrucosa, nearly motionless, empty of food, with a large central vesicle, and measuring 1/25th of a millimetre in diameter. Within a short distance of it, and moving directly toward it, was another and more active amoeba, regarding the species of which he was not positive. It was perhaps the one described by Dujardin as amoeba limax, by which name it may be called. As first noticed, this amoeba was one-eighth of a millimetre long, with a number of conical pseudopods projecting from the front border, which was one-sixteenth of a millimetre wide. The creature contained a number of spherical food spaces with sienna colored contents, a large diatom filled with endochrome, besides several clear food spaces, a posterior contractile vesicle, and the usual glanular endosarc. The amoeba limax approached and came into contact with the motionless amoeba verrucosa. Moving to the right, it left a long finger-like pseudopod curved around its lower half, and then extended a similar one around the upper half until it met the first pseudo-pod. After a few moments the ends of the two projections actually became continuous, and the verrucosa was enclosed in the embrace of the amoeba limax. The latter assumed a perfectly circular outline, and after a while a uniformly smooth surface. It now moved away with its new capture, and after a short time what had been the head end contracted and became wrinkled and villous in appearance, while from what had been the tail end ten conical pseudopods projected. The amoeba verrucosa assumed an oval form, and the contractile vesicle became indistinct without collapsing. Moving on, the amoeba limax became more slug-like in shape. The amoeba verrucosa now appeared enclosed in a large oval, clear vacuole or space, was constricted so as to be gourd-shaped, and had lost all trace of its vesicle. Subsequently it was doubled upon itself, and at this point the amoeba limax discharged from one side of the tail end the siliceous case of the diatom, which now contained only a shrivelled cord of endochrome. Later the amoeba verrucosa was broken up into fine spherical granular balls, and these gradually became obscured and apparently diffused among the granular contents of theendosarcof the amoeba limax. The observations from the time of the seizure of the amoeba verrucosa to its digestion or disappearance among the granular matter of the entosarc of its captor, occupied seven hours. From naked amoeba the shell-protected rhizopods were no doubt evolved, and it is a curious sight to observe them swallowed, home and all, to be digested out of their house. It was also interesting to observe the cannibal amoeba swallowing one of its own kind and appropriating its structure to its own use, just as we might do the contents of an egg. The amoeba verrucosa he describes as remarkable for its sluggish character, and in appearance reminds one of a little pile of epithelial scales or a fragment of dandruff from the head. It is oval or rounded, transparent, and more or less wrinkled, or marked with delicate, wavy lines.
THE SOURCES OF POTABLE WATER.
In the British Social Science meeting, Mr. Latham, a civil engineer of London, brought up the question of water supplies and endeavored to find rules for the guidance of water engineers in those apparently contradictory facts which the observation of recent years has produced so abundantly. It has been generally considered that water which has received the sewage of large populations must be unfit for domestic use; but careful investigation would show that when such polluting matter has been passed into a river, and exposed to the influence of light, vegetation, etc., it becomes innocuous. This is shown by the good health enjoyed by the inhabitants of London, which place receives its supply chiefly from the Thames and the Lea, both of which rivers receive a considerable amount of sewage pollution. The author instanced Wakefield, Doncaster, and Ely as towns that draw their supplies of water from sources into which sewage matter enters, and yet whose inhabitants are healthy. The cholera epidemic at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1853 was supposed to have been caused by the use of polluted Tyne water, and yet it was clearly ascertained that disease was much more rife among those persons who used local well water. These facts, which have often been quoted, were not favorably received by the audience, who greeted with laughter Mr. Latham's assertion that water into which sewage matter has entered can be purified by a short exposure to the air. That statement may be too strong; but there is acknowledged truth in the author's main point. He considered it was clearly proved that water derived from underground sources, or from which light and air have been excluded, is impure, and consequently unfit for domestic use. Universal testimony showed that decaying matter easily found its way into underground sources of supply. Well water may become seriously contaminated by the slow steeping of noxious matters, and be less wholesome than the water of a running stream that receives much larger quantities of impurity.
THEORY OF THE RADIOMETER.
Prof. Crookes has at length announced a theory in explanation of the movements exhibited by the remarkable "light mill" of his invention. He says: "The evidence afforded by the experiments is to my mind so strong as almost to amount to conviction, that the repulsion resulting from radiation is due to the action of thermometric heat between the surface of the moving body and the case of the instrument, through the intervention of the residual gas. This explanation of its action is in accordance with recent speculations as to the ultimate constitution of matter, and the dynamical theory of gases." The most refined means for exhausting the air from the glass bulb which contains the suspended vanes of the radiometer leave, and if they were to be carried to absolute mechanical perfection, would still leave a certain amount of gas in it. But Dr. Crookes has carried this attenuation so far that the number of gas molecules present can no longer be considered as practically infinite. Nor is the mean length of their paths between their collisions any longer very small compared to the size of the bulb. The latest use to which the radiometer has been put was to test the viscosity of gases at decreasing pressures. The glass bulb was furnished with a stopper lubricated with burnt rubber. This was fixed and carried a fine thread of glass which is almost perfectly elastic. To the end of this thread hung a thin oblong plate of pith to which a mirror was attached. The glass stopper being fixed, and the bulb capable of rotation through a small angle, it is evident that when the bulb is rotated the pith ball will remain at rest except as it yields to the friction of the air moved by the bulb. It does move, swinging a certain distance and then back, like a pendulum. The amount of this movement is carefully observed by a telescope, and recorded for five successive beats. As the pith and glass fibre form a torsion pendulum, it is evident that these beats will gradually die down in consequence of the resistance of the air. By exhausting the air to various degrees of rarity, it was proved that Prof. Clerk Maxwell's theory, that the viscosity of a gas is independent of its density, is correct. The logarithmic decrement of the first five oscillations (that is, the decrease, oscillation by oscillation, of the logarithm of the arc through which the pith vanes swing), was found to be nearly the same when the air was almost exhausted as when it was at its natural pressure, proving that its viscosity remained nearly equal for all pressures. Only in the exceptionally perfect vacuum referred to above did this logarithmic decrement sink to about one-twentieth of what it had commenced with. Repulsion of the vane by the action of light commences when this decrement is one-fourth of what it was before the exhaustion of air began. As the rarity of the air within the bulb increases the force of this repulsion begins to diminish, like the logarithmic decrement, and when the latter has sunk to one-twentieth the former has fallen off one-half. All these and other facts previously obtained prove that the action of light is notdirect, butindirect; and Dr. Crookes has, after repeatedly refusing to consider hasty judgments, in consequence come to the conclusion stated above, that the rotation of the light mill is the result of heat. This decision accords with the opinion of other observers. The radiometer has already entered the field of industrial science, and is used to measure the duration of exposure of photographic plates. De Fonvielle has made with it a new determination of the sun's thermometric power. He made a spectroscope with a graduated screen, which permitted the amount of light that entered the apparatus to be graduated at will. In the path of the beam he placed a radiometer, and by comparing its action in the graduated light ray, and in the light of a standard oil lamp, burning 42 grammes (11.3 ounces Troy) per hour, he found that at 4 o'clock, on June 4, 1876, the radiating force of the sun was equal to 14 lamps placed 25 centimetres (10 inches) from the radiometer.
TEMPERED GLASS IN THE HOUSEHOLD.
The "tempered glass," which has made the name of M. de la Bastié, its discoverer, so well known, does not prove to be always manageable. It was to have the strength of metal, and not shiver with changes of temperature. But an English lady has found that it sometimes has precisely the contrary characteristics. She purchased twelve globes for gaslights, and they were made in the manufactory of M. de la Bastié himself. But one night, after the gas had been extinguished for exactly an hour, one of the globes burst with a report, and fell in pieces on the floor, leaving the bottom ring still on the burner. These pieces, which were of course found to be perfectly cold, were some two or three inches long and an inch or so wide. They continued for an hour or more splitting up and subdividing themselves into smaller and still smaller fragments, each split being accompanied by a slight report, until at length there was not a fragment larger than a hazel nut, and the greater part of the glass was in pieces of about the size of a pea, and of a crystalline form. In the morning it was found that the rim had fallen from the burner to the floor in atoms. In all these phenomena the behavior was that of unannealed glass, of which so many curious performances have been related.
THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM.
A marine and fresh-water aquarium has been opened in New York, and both from its intrinsic merits and as the first attempt to institute in this country a valuable mode of scientific amusement and instruction, it deserves mention. It does not equal in size or arrangements any of the celebrated places of the kind abroad. Still it contains tanks of considerable size, and in them some very interesting denizens. The shark, sturgeon, skate, sea-turtle, and other fishes are represented by large individuals, and their habits can be watched at leisure. A small white whale was also at one time one of the attractions. Fish breeding is carried on in the establishment, which receives constant additions to its occupants by expeditions which are said to be especially planned for this purpose. In any case New York is an excellent point for an aquarium, and probably receives every year enough rare living fish at its great markets to maintain such an institution. The commencement now made is a worthy one, and it can easily become an important source of pleasure and usefulness. The system employed is that of constant circulation, the water being pumped from a reservoir to the several tanks. Pumps and pipes are made of hard rubber. A library, a naturalists' laboratory, equipped with tables, microscopes, etc., are either established or projected in the building.
THE CRUELTY OF HUNTING.
The outcry against the practice of making surgical experiments upon living dogs, rabbits, and other animals has roused some vivisectionists to return to the subject of hunting. This is one of the principal themes of the philosophic philanthropist, whose opposition to the practice seems to be an outgrowth of the better acquaintance which man has made, through science, with the lower animals. He accomplishes his task very effectively by calculating the number of animals which are wounded but not recovered by English sportsmen every year. The official returns show that in 1873-'4 there were 132,036 holders of gun licenses, and 65,846 holders of licenses to kill game in the British dominions. In 1874-'5 the numbers were 144,278 and 68,079, showing that the disposition and ability to hunt are on the increase. As a basis for computation, the partridge season of 21 weeks is taken, and two days' hunting are allowed for each week; while three birds are supposed to be wounded and "lost" daily by each sportsman. This gives 126 birds wounded and left to suffer unknown torments by each one of the 68,079 holders of game licenses. The total is no less than 8,296,496 "lost" birds in 1873-'4, and 8,577,954 in 1874-'5. Then the holders of gun licenses have the right to shoot birds which are destructive to crops, etc., and two lost birds each week in the year is calculated to be the average. This makes no less than 13,731,744 wounded birds in 1873-'4, and 15,004,912 in 1874-'5. The total is in round numberstwenty millionbirds injured each year! These estimates are made by "Nature," and they correctly represent the ground on which the modern opposition to the hunt as a cruel and unnecessary occupation is based. Of course the figures are not exact. The only effort made was to have them within bounds; and considering all the varieties of game pursued in England, and the extraordinary keenness of Englishmen for sport, this estimate is probably correct. Quite lately they have been confirmed by a noted hunter on the western plains, who says that in his case a day's sport was usually marked by the "loss" of two or three animals. As he is an uncommon shot, his experience cannot be more unfortunate than the average. Such calculations show us how enormous are the results when the whole human race engages in one action. At present, English society offers the contradictory spectacle of a large and increasing body of hunters who oppose vivisection on the ground of cruelty, and a small and increasing body of vivisectionists who oppose hunting also on the ground of cruelty.