Chapters 20
-
1 01 - The Approaching Epidemic 4:25
The Approaching Epidemic by Mark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Arthur Trinchera. The Approaching Epidemic. One calamity to which the death of Mr. Dickens dooms this country has not awakened the concern to which its gravity entitles it. We refer to the fact that the nation is to be lectured to death, and read to death, all next winter, by Tom, Dick, and Harry with poor lamented Dickens for a pretext. All the vagabonds who can spell will afflict the people with readings from Pickwick and Copperfield, And all the insignificants who have been ennobled by the notice of the great novelist or transfigured by his smile will make a marketable commodity of it now and turn the sacred reminiscence to the practical use of procuring bread and butter.
The lecture rostrums will fairly swarm with these fortunates. Already the signs of it are perceptible. Behold how the unclean creatures are wending toward the dead lion and gathering to the feast. Reminiscences of Dickens. A lecture by John Smith, who heard him read eight times. Remembrances of Charles Dickens. A lecture by John Jones, who saw him once in a streetcar and twice in a barber shop. Recollections of Mr. Dickens. A lecture. by John Brown, who gained a wide fame of writing deliriously appreciative critiques and rhapsodies upon the great author's public readings, and who shook hands with the great author upon various occasions, and held converse with him several times. Readings by Dickens.
by John White, who has the great delineator's style and manner perfectly having attended all his readings in this country and made these things a study. Always practicing each reading before retiring, and while it was hot from the great delineator's lips. Upon this occasion, Mr. W. will exhibit the remains of a cigar which he saw Mr. Dickens smoke. This relic is kept in a solid silver box made purposely for it. Sights and Sounds of the Great Novelist. A popular lecture. By John Gray, who waited on his table all the time he was at the Grand Hotel, New York, and still has in his possession, and will exhibit to the audience a fragment of the last piece of bread which the lamented author tasted in this country.
Heart Treasures of Precious Moments with Literature's Departed Monarch. A Lecture By Miss Serena Amelia Tryphenia McSpadden Who still wears, and will always wear, a glove upon the hand made sacred by the clasp of Dickens. Only death shall remove it. Readings from Dickens by Mrs. J. O'Hooligan Murphy, who washed for him. Familiar Talks with the Great Author, a narrative lecture, by John Thomas for two weeks his Ballet in America, and so forth and so on. This isn't half the list. The man who has a toothpick, once used by Charles Dickens, will have to have a hearing, and the man who once rode in an omnibus with Charles Dickens, and the lady to whom Charles Dickens granted the hospitalities of his umbrella during a storm, and the person who possesses a hole which once belonged in a handkerchief owned by Mr.
Dickens. Be patient and long-suffering, good people. For even this does not fill up the measure of what you must endure next winter. There is no creature in all this land who has had any personal relations with the late Mr. Dickens, however slight or trivial, but will shoulder his way to the rostrum and inflict his testimony upon his helpless countrymen. To some people it is fatal to be noticed by greatness. End of The Approaching Epidemic.
-
2 02 - Christianity and Culture 27:59
Christianity and Culture by J. Gresham Machen. One of the greatest of the problems that have agitated the Church is the problem of the relation between knowledge and piety, between culture and Christianity. This problem has appeared first of all in the presence of two tendencies in the Church, the scientific or academic tendency, and what may be called the practical tendency. Some men have devoted themselves chiefly to the task of forming right conceptions as to Christianity and its foundations. To them, no fact, however trivial, has appeared worthy of neglect. By them, truth has been cherished for its own sake without immediate reference to practical consequences. Some, on the other hand, have emphasized the essential simplicity of the Gospel.
The world is lying in misery, we ourselves are sinners, men are perishing in sin every day. The Gospel is the sole means of escape, let us preach it to the world, while yet we may. So desperate is the need that we have no time to engage in vain babblings or old wives' fables. While we are discussing the exact location of the churches of Galatia, men are perishing under the curse of the law. While we are settling the date of Jesus' birth, the world is doing without its Christmas message. The representatives of both of these tendencies regard themselves as Christians, but too often there is little brotherly feeling between them. The Christian of academic tastes accuses his brother of undue emotionalism, of shallow argumentation, of cheap methods of work.
On the other hand, your practical man is ever loud in his denunciation of academic indifference to the dire needs of humanity. The scholar is represented either as a dangerous disseminator of doubt, or else as a man whose faith is a faith without works. A man who investigates human sin and the grace of God by the aid solely of dusty volumes, carefully secluded in a warm and comfortable study, without a thought of the men who are perishing in misery every day. But if the problem appears thus in the presence of different tendencies in the Church, it becomes yet far more insistent within the consciousness of the individual. If we are thoughtful, we must see that the desire to know and the desire to be saved are widely different.
The scholar must apparently assume the attitude of an impartial observer, an attitude which seems absolutely impossible to the pious Christian laying hold upon Jesus as the only saviour from the load of sin. If these two activities, on the one hand the acquisition of knowledge and on the other the exercise and inculcation of simple faith, are both to be given a place in our lives, the question of their proper relationship cannot be ignored. The problem is made for us the more difficult of solution because we are unprepared for it. Our whole system of school and college education is so constituted as to keep religion and culture as far apart as possible and ignore the question of the relationship between them.
On five or six days in the week, we were engaged in the acquisition of knowledge. From this activity, the study of religion was banished. We studied natural science without considering its bearing or lack of bearing upon natural theology or upon revelation. We studied Greek without opening the New Testament. We studied history with careful avoidance of the greatest of historical movements, which was ushered in by the preaching of Jesus. In philosophy, the vital importance of the study for religion could not entirely be concealed, but it was kept as far as possible in the background. On Sundays, on the other hand, we had religious instruction that called for little exercise of the intellect. Careful preparation for Sunday school lessons, as for lessons in mathematics or Latin, was unknown.
Religion seemed to be something that had to do only with the emotions and the will, leaving the intellect to secular studies. What wonder that after such training we came to regard religion and culture as belonging to two entirely separate compartments of the soul, and their union as involving the destruction of both. Upon entering the seminary, we are suddenly introduced to an entirely different procedure. Religion is suddenly removed from its seclusion. The same methods of study are applied to it, as were formerly reserved for natural science and for history. We study the Bible no longer solely with the desire of moral and spiritual improvement, but also in order to know. Perhaps the first impression is one of infinite loss.
The scientific spirit seems to be replacing simple faith, the mere apprehension of dead facts to be replacing the practice of principles. The difficulty is perhaps not so much that we are brought face to face with new doubts as to the truth of Christianity. Rather, is it the conflict of method, of spirit, that troubles us? The scientific spirit seems to be incompatible with the old spirit of simple faith. In short, almost entirely unprepared, we are brought face to face with the problem of the relationship between knowledge and piety, or, otherwise expressed, between culture and Christianity. This problem may be settled in one of three ways. In the first place, Christianity may be subordinated to culture.
That solution really, though to some extent unconsciously, is being favoured by a very large and influential portion of the Church today. For the elimination of the supernatural in Christianity, so tremendously common today, really makes Christianity merely natural. Christianity becomes a human product, a mere part of human culture. But as such, it is something entirely different from the old Christianity that was based upon a direct revelation from God. Deprived thus of its note of authority, the gospel is no gospel any longer. It is a check for untold millions, but without the signature at the bottom. So, in subordinating Christianity to culture, we have really destroyed Christianity, and what continues to bear the old name is a counterfeit.
The second solution goes to the opposite extreme. In its effort to give religion a clear field, it seeks to destroy culture. This solution is better than the first. Instead of indulging in a shallow optimism or deification of humanity, it recognizes the profound evil of the world and does not shrink from the most heroic remedy. The world is so evil that it cannot. Now... In its extreme form, this solution hardly requires refutation. If Christianity is really found to contradict that reason, which is our only means of apprehending truth, then of course we must either modify or abandon Christianity. We cannot therefore be entirely independent of the achievements of the intellect. Furthermore, we cannot without inconsistency employ the printing press, the railroad, the telegraph in the propagation of our gospel, and at the same time denounce as evil those activities of the human mind that produced these things.
And in the production of these things, not merely practical inventive genius had a part, but also, back of that, the investigations of pure science, animated simply by the desire to know. In its extreme form, therefore, involving the abandonment of all intellectual activity, this second solution would be adopted by none of us. But very many pious men in the Church today are adopting this solution in essence and in spirit. They admit that the Christian must have a part in human culture, but they regard such activity as a necessary evil. A dangerous and unworthy task necessary to be gone through with under a stern sense of duty in order that thereby the higher ends of the gospel may be attained.
Such men can never engage in the arts and sciences with anything like enthusiasm. Such enthusiasm they would regard as disloyalty to the gospel. Such a position is really both illogical and unbiblical. God has given us certain powers of mind, and has implanted within us the ineradicable conviction that these powers were intended to be exercised. The Bible, too, contains poetry that exhibits no lack of enthusiasm, no lack of a keen appreciation of beauty. With this second solution of the problem, we cannot rest content. Despite all we can do, the desire to know and the love of beauty cannot be entirely stifled, and we cannot permanently regard these desires as evil. Are then Christianity and culture in a conflict that is to be settled only by the destruction of one or the other of the contending forces?
A third solution, fortunately, is possible, namely consecration. Instead of destroying the arts and sciences, or being indifferent to them, let us cultivate them with all the enthusiasm of the various humanists, but at the same time consecrate them to the service of our God. Instead of stifling the pleasures afforded by the acquisition of knowledge or by the appreciation of what is beautiful, let us accept these pleasures as the gifts of a heavenly Father. Instead of obliterating the distinction between the kingdom and the world, or, on the other hand, withdrawing from the world into a sort of modernized intellectual monasticism, let us go forth joyfully, enthusiastically, to make the world subject to God.
Certain obvious advantages are connected with such a solution of the problem. In the first place, a logical advantage. A man can believe only what he holds to be true. We are Christians because we hold Christianity to be true. But other men hold Christianity to be false. Who is right? That question can be settled only by an examination and comparison of the reasons adduced on both sides. It is true, one of the grounds for our belief is an inward experience that we cannot share, the great experience begun by conviction of sin and conversion and continued by communion with God. An experience which other men do not possess, and upon which, therefore, we cannot directly base an argument. But if our position is correct, we ought at least to be able to show the other man that his reasons may be inconclusive.
And that involves careful study of both sides of the question. Furthermore, the field of Christianity is the world. The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations, but also all of human thought. The Christian, therefore, cannot be indifferent to any branch of earnest human endeavor. It must all be brought into some relation to the Gospel. It must be studied either in order to be demonstrated as false, or else in order to be made useful in advancing the kingdom of God. The kingdom must be advanced not merely extensively, but also intensively. The Church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole of man.
We are accustomed to encourage ourselves in our discouragements by the thought of the time when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. No less inspiring is the other aspect of that same great consummation. That will also be a time when doubts have disappeared, when every contradiction has been removed. When all of science converges to one great conviction, when all of art is devoted to one great end, when all of human thinking is permeated by the refining, ennobling influence of Jesus, when every thought has been brought into subjection to the obedience of Christ. If to some of our practical men these advantages of our solution of the problem seem to be intangible, we can point to the merely numerical advantage of intellectual and artistic activity within the Church.
We are all agreed that at least one great function of the Church is the conversion of individual men. The missionary movement is the great religious movement of our day. Now, it is perfectly true that men must be brought to Christ one by one. There are no labor-saving devices in evangelism. It is all handwork. And yet, it would be a great mistake to suppose that all men are equally well prepared to receive the Gospel. It is true that the decisive thing is the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of preparation, and the absence of that makes even the best preparation useless. But, as a matter of fact, God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the Gospel.
False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer, yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root. Many would have the seminary's combat error by attacking it as it is taught by its popular exponents. Instead of that, they confuse their students with a lot of German names unknown outside the walls of the universities.
That method of procedure is based simply upon a profound belief in the pervasiveness of ideas. What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated. The time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate. So, as Christians, we should try to mould the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity. Thoughtful men are wondering why the students of our great Eastern universities no longer enter the ministry or display any very vital interest in Christianity. Various totally inadequate explanations are proposed.
Such as the increasing attractiveness of other professions. An absurd explanation, by the way, since other professions are becoming so overcrowded that a man can barely make a living in them. The real difficulty amounts to this, that the thought of the day, as it makes itself most strongly felt in the universities, but from them spreads inevitably to the masses of the people, is profoundly opposed to Christianity, or at least, what is nearly as bad, it is out of all connection with Christianity. The Church is unable either to combat it or to assimilate it, because the Church simply does not understand it. Under such circumstances, what more pressing duty than for those who have received the mighty experience of regeneration, who therefore do not, like the world, neglect that whole series of vitally relevant facts which is embraced in Christian experience, what is more pressing duty than for these men to make themselves masters of the thought of the world in order to make it an instrument of truth instead of error?
The Church has no right to be so absorbed in helping the individual that she forgets the world. There are two objections to our solution of the problem. If you bring culture and Christianity thus into close union, in the first place will not Christianity destroy culture? Must not art and science be independent in order to flourish? We answer that it all depends upon the nature of their dependence. Subjection to any external authority, or even to any human authority, would be fatal to art and science. But subjection to God is entirely different. Dedication of human powers to God is found, as a matter of fact, not to destroy but to heighten them. God gave those powers. He understands them well enough, not bunglingly, to destroy his own gifts.
In the second place, will not culture destroy Christianity? Is it not far easier to be an earnest Christian if you confine your attention to the Bible and do not risk being led astray by the thought of the world? We answer, of course, it is easier. Shut yourself up in an intellectual monastery, do not disturb yourself with the thoughts of unregenerate men, and of course you will find it easier to be a Christian, just as it is easier to be a good soldier in comfortable winter quarters than it is on the field of battle. You save your own soul, but the Lord's enemies remain in possession of the field. But by whom is this task of transforming the unwieldy, resisting mass of human thought? Until it becomes subservient to the Gospel, by whom is this task to be accomplished?
To some extent, no doubt, by professors in theological seminaries and universities, but the ordinary minister of the Gospel cannot shirk his responsibility. It is a great mistake to suppose that investigation can successfully be carried on by a few specialists whose work is of interest to nobody but themselves. Many men of many minds are needed. What we need first of all, especially in our American churches, is a more general interest in the problems of theological science. Without that, the specialist is without the stimulating atmosphere which nerves him to do his work. But no matter what his station in life, the scholar must be a regenerated man. He must yield to no one in the intensity and depth of his religious experience.
We are well supplied in the world with excellent scholars who are without that qualification. They are doing useful work in detail, in biblical philology, in exegesis, in biblical theology, and in other branches of study. But they are not accomplishing the great task. They are not assimilating modern thought to Christianity because they are without that experience of God's power in the soul, which is of the essence of Christianity. They have only one side for the comparison. Modern thought they know, but Christianity is really foreign to them. It is just that great inward experience which it is the function of the true Christian scholar to bring into some sort of connection with the thought of the world.
During the last thirty years there has been a tremendous defection from the Christian Church. It is evidenced even by things that lie on the surface. For example, by the decline in church attendance and in Sabbath observance and in the number of candidates for the ministry. Special explanations, it is true, are sometimes given for these discouraging tendencies. But why should we deceive ourselves? Why comfort ourselves by palliative explanations? Let us face the facts. The falling off in church attendance, the neglect of Sabbath observance, these things are simply surface indications of a decline in the power of Christianity. Christianity is exerting a far less powerful direct influence in the civilized world today than it was exerting 30 years ago.
What is the cause of this tremendous defection? For my part, I have little hesitation in saying that it lies chiefly in the intellectual sphere. Men do not accept Christianity because they can no longer be convinced that Christianity is true. It may be useful, but is it true? Other explanations, of course, are given. The modern defection from the Church is explained by the practical materialism of the age. Men are so much engrossed in making money that they have no time for spiritual things. That explanation has a certain range of validity, but its range is limited. It applies perhaps to the boom towns of the West, where men are intoxicated by sudden possibilities of boundless wealth. But the defection from Christianity is far broader than that.
It is felt in the settled countries of Europe even more strongly than in America. It is felt among the poor just as strongly as among the rich. Finally, it is felt most strongly of all in the universities, and that is only one indication more that the true cause of the defection is intellectual. To a very large extent, the students of our great Eastern universities, and still more the universities of Europe, are not Christians. And they are not Christians often just because they are students. The thought of the day, as it makes itself most strongly felt in the universities, is profoundly opposed to Christianity, or at least it is out of connection with Christianity. The chief obstacle to the Christian religion today lies in the sphere of the intellect.
That assertion must be guarded against two misconceptions. In the first place, I do not mean that most men reject Christianity consciously on account of intellectual difficulties. On the contrary, rejection of Christianity is due in the vast majority of cases simply to indifference. Only a few men have given the subject real attention. The vast majority of those who reject the Gospel do so simply because they know nothing about it. But whence comes this indifference? It is due to the intellectual atmosphere in which men are living. The modern world is dominated by ideas which ignore the Gospel. Modern culture is not altogether opposed to the Gospel, but it is out of all connection with it. It not only prevents the acceptance of Christianity, it prevents Christianity even from getting a hearing.
In the second place, I do not mean that the removal of intellectual objections will make a man a Christian. No conversion was ever wrought simply by argument. A change of heart is also necessary, and that can be wrought only by the immediate exercise of the power of God. But because intellectual labor is insufficient, it does not follow, as is so often assumed, that it is unnecessary. God may, it is true, overcome all intellectual obstacles by an immediate exercise of his regenerative power. Sometimes he does, but he does so very seldom. Usually he exerts his power in connection with certain conditions of the human mind. Usually, he does not bring into the kingdom, entirely without preparation, those whose mind and fancy are completely dominated by ideas which make the acceptance of the gospel logically impossible.
Modern culture is a tremendous force. It affects all classes of society. It affects the ignorant as well as the learned. What is to be done about that? In the first place, the church may simply withdraw from the conflict. She may simply allow the mighty stream of modern thought to flow by unheeded and do her work merely in the back eddies of the current. There are still some men in the world who have been unaffected by modern culture. They may still be one for Christ without intellectual labor. And they must be one. It is useful, it is necessary work. If the Church is satisfied with that alone, let her give up the scientific education of her ministry. Let her assume the truth of her message and learn simply how it may be applied in detail to modern industrial and social conditions.
Let her give up the laborious study of Greek and Hebrew. Let her abandon the scientific study of history to the men of the world. In a day of increased scientific interest, let the Church go on becoming less scientific. In a day of increased specialization, of renewed interest in philology and in history, Of more rigorous scientific method, let the Church go on abandoning her Bible to her enemies. They will study it scientifically, rest assured, if the Church does not. Let her substitute sociology altogether for Hebrew, practical expertness for the proof of her gospel. Let her shorten the preparation of her ministry, let her permit it to be interrupted yet more and more by premature practical activity.
By doing so, she will win a straggler here and there, but her winnings will be but temporary. The great current of modern culture will sooner or later engulf her puny eddy. God will save her somehow, out of the depths, but the labour of centuries will have been swept away. God grant that the Church may not resign herself to that. God grant she may face her problems squarely and bravely. That problem is not easy. It involves the very basis of her faith. Christianity is the proclamation of a historical fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Modern thought has no place for that proclamation. It prevents men even from listening to the message. Yet the culture of today cannot simply be rejected as a whole.
It is not like the pagan culture of the first century. It is not wholly non-Christian. Much of it has been derived directly from the Bible. There are significant movements in it going to waste which might well be used for the defense of the gospel. The situation is complex. Easy wholesale measures are not in place. Discrimination, investigation is necessary. Some of modern thought must be refuted. The rest must be made subservient. But nothing in it can be ignored. He that is not with us is against us. Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the gospel, or else it is the deadliest enemy of the gospel. For making it subservient, religious emotion is not enough. Intellectual labor is also necessary, and that labor is being neglected.
The Church has turned to easier tasks, and now she is reaping the fruits of her indolence. Now she must battle for her life. The situation is desperate. It might discourage us, but not if we are truly Christians. Not if we are living in vital communion with the risen Lord. If we are really convinced of the truth of our message, then we can proclaim it before a world of enemies, then the very difficulty of our task, the very scarcity of our allies, becomes an inspiration. Then we can even rejoice that God did not place us in an easy age, but in a time of doubt and perplexity and battle. Then, too, we shall not be afraid to call forth other soldiers into the conflict. Instead of making our theological seminaries merely centers of religious emotion, we shall make them battlegrounds of the faith, where, helped a little by the experience of Christian teachers, men are taught to fight their own battle, where they come to appreciate the real strength of the adversary, and in the hard school of intellectual struggle learn to substitute for the unthinking faith of childhood the profound convictions of full-grown men.
Let us not fear, in this, a loss of spiritual power. The Church is perishing today through the lack of thinking, not through an excess of it. She is winning victories in the sphere of material betterment. Such victories are glorious. God save us from the heartless crime of disparaging them. They are relieving the misery of men. But if they stand alone, I fear they are but temporary. The things which are seen are temporal. The things which are not seen are eternal. What will become of philanthropy if God be lost? Beneath the surface of life lies a world of spirit. Philosophers have attempted to explore it. Christianity has revealed its wonders to the simple soul. There lie the springs of the Church's power.
But the spiritual realm cannot be entered without controversy. And now the Church is shrinking from the conflict. Driven from the spiritual realm by the current of modern thought, she is consoling herself with things about which there is no dispute. If she favours better housing for the poor, she need fear no contradiction. She will need all her courage. She will have enemies enough, God knows. But they will not fight her with argument. The twentieth century, in theory, is agreed on social betterment. But sin and death and salvation and life and God, about these things there is debate. You can avoid the debate if you choose. You need only drift with the current. Preach every Sunday during your seminary course.
Devote the fag ends of your time to study and to thought. Study about as you studied in college, and these questions will probably never trouble you. The great questions may easily be avoided. Many preachers are avoiding them, and many preachers are preaching to the air. The Church is waiting for men of another type, men to fight her battles and solve her problems. The hope of finding them is the one great inspiration of a seminary's life. They need not all be men of conspicuous attainments. But they must all be men of thought. They must fight hard against spiritual and intellectual indolence. Their thinking may be confined to narrow limits, but it must be their own. To them, theology must be something more than a task.
It must be a matter of inquiry. It must lead not to successful memorizing, but to genuine convictions. The Church is puzzled by the world's indifference. She is trying to overcome it by adapting her message to the fashions of the day. But if, instead, before the conflict, she would descend into the secret place of meditation, If by the clear light of the Gospel she would seek an answer not merely to the questions of the hour, but first of all to the eternal problems of the spiritual world, then perhaps by God's grace, through His good Spirit, in His good time, End of Christianity and Culture by J. Gresham Machen
-
3 03 - Coffee, Tea & Cocoa Recipes 10:38
Drinks by Maria Parloa.
Recording by Betty B. Drinks. Cocoa. Cocoa is rich in nutritive elements. Like milk, it has all the substances necessary for the growth and sustenance of the body. It is the fruit of a small tree that grows in Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, and other islands. The fruit is in shape like a large, thick cucumber, and contains from six to thirty beans. There is a number of forms in which it is sold in the market, the most convenient and nutritious being chocolate. Next comes cocoa, then cocoa nibs, and lastly cocoa shells. The beans of the cocoa are roasted in the same manner as coffee. The husks, or shells, are taken off and the beans then ground between hot rollers. Sometimes the husks are not removed, but ground with the bean.
The ground bean is called cocoa, and mixed with sugar, after being ground very fine, is termed chocolate. Vanilla is often added as a flavor. Sometimes the cocoa is mixed with starch. When the bean is broken in small pieces, these are called nibs. To make cocoa. Put a gill of the broken cocoa in a pot with two quarts of water, and boil gently three hours. There should be a quart of liquid in the pot when done. If the boiling has been so rapid that there is not this quantity, add more water and let it boil once again. Many people prefer half broken cocoa and half shells. If the stomach is delicate, this is better than all cocoa. Sugar and milk are used as with coffee. Shells. Use twice the quantity of shells that you would of broken cocoa, and boil twice as long.
Chocolate. Scrape fine an ounce, one of the small squares of baker's or any other plain chocolate. Add two tablespoons of sugar and put in a small saucepan with a tablespoonful of hot water. Stir over a hot fire for a minute or two until it is perfectly smooth and glossy, and then stir it all into a quart of boiling milk. or half milk and half water. Mix thoroughly and serve at once. If the chocolate is wanted richer, take twice as much chocolate, sugar, and water. Made in this way, chocolate is perfectly smooth and free of oily particles. If it is allowed to boil after the chocolate is added to the milk, it becomes oily and loses its fine flavor. Coffee. There is a variety of coffees, but unlike the teas, they do not owe their difference of flavor or color to the curing, but to the soil and climate in which they grow.
Coffee grows on small trees. The fruit is something like the cherry, but there are two seeds in it. The beans are separated by being bruised with a heavy roller and are then washed and dried. The longer the raw berry is kept, the riper and better flavored it becomes. In countries where coffee is grown, the leaves are used as much as the berry. Like tea, coffee must be roasted, that the fine flavor shall be developed. There are large establishments for roasting and grinding coffee. The work is done by machinery, and nearly always the grains are evenly roasted and just enough to give the right flavor. If the coffee, after roasting, is put in close tin cans, it will retain its best qualities for a long time.
It can be ground when needed for use. Many persons think that heating the dry coffee just before making improves the flavor. There are many modes of making coffee, each having its advantages and disadvantages. Some people think that by first wetting the coffee with cold water and letting it come to a boil, and by then adding the boiling water, more of the strength of the coffee is extracted. When there is not cream for coffee, the milk should be boiled, as it makes the coffee richer. As soon as the milk boils up, it should be taken off of the stove, since it grows strong and oily by much boiling. Too many people, it is injurious to drink coffee, but physicians say that, taken without milk, it is harmless.
Some element of the coffee combines with the milk to form a leathery coating on the stomach, which impairs digestion. A great many substances are mixed with coffee when sold to cheapen it, chicory, beans, peas, rye, and wheat being the commonest. To obtain it pure, the safest way is to buy it unground unless you purchase of a strictly honest dealer. Coffee drinkers, as a rule, eat less than other people, though coffee, and also tea, have little direct food value, but they retard the waste of the tissues and so take the place of food. The sugar and milk used with them give some nutriment. Boiled coffee. The old method of boiling coffee is still practiced by at least one half the housekeepers in this country.
The coffee is sometimes boiled with an egg, which makes it perfectly clear and also enriching it. When an egg is not used, a small piece of salt fish skin is boiled with the coffee to clear it. Directions for making. A small cupful of roasted and ground coffee, 1 third mocha and 2 thirds java. A small egg, shell and all, broken into the pot with the dry coffee. Stir well with a spoon and then pour on three pints of boiling water. Let it boil from five to ten minutes, counting from the time it begins to boil. As soon as it has boiled enough, pour in a cupful of cold water and turn a little of the coffee into a cup. To see that the nozzle of the pot is not filled with grounds. Turn this back and let the coffee stand a few moments to settle, taking care that it does not boil again.
The advantages of boiled coffee are that when the egg is used, the yolk gives a very rich flavor, and when the milk or cream is added, the coffee has a rich yellow look, which is pleasing. It has also a peculiar flavor, which many people prefer to the flavor gained by any other process. The disadvantages are that the egg coats the dry coffee, and when the hot water is added, the coating becomes hard, and a great deal of the best of the coffee remains in the grounds after boiling. Also, in boiling, much of the fine flavor is lost in the steam that escapes from the pot. Filtered coffee. Another, and really the most economical and the easiest way of making coffee is by filtering. The French coffee biggin is valuable for this.
It consists of two cylindrical tin vessels, one fitting into another, and the bottom of the upper being a fine strainer. Another coarser strainer with a rod running from the center is placed upon this. Then the coffee, which must be finely ground, is put in, and another strainer is placed at the top of the rod. The boiling water is poured on, and the pot's set where it will keep hot, but not boil, until the water has gone through. This will make a clear, strong coffee with a rich, smooth flavor. The advantage of the two extra strainers is that the one coming next to the fine strainer prevents the grounds from filling up the fine holes, and so the coffee is clear and made more easily. The upper strainer causes the boiling water to fall on the coffee like rain.
In this way, it is more evenly distributed, and the fine coffee is not carried through the fine strainer, as it would be if the water were poured directly on the dry coffee. When milk or cream is added to filtered coffee, it does not turn a rich yellow, as in the case of that boiled with an egg. A few spoonfuls of this coffee without sugar or milk, taken after dinner, is said to help digestion. Vienna Coffee. A quarter of a cupful of boiled milk. Add three tablespoons of whipped cream and fill up with filtered coffee. Café au lait. This is simply one pint of filtered coffee added to one pint of milk that has come just to the boiling point. Steamed coffee. Another mode of preparing coffee is to steam it.
The coffee is put in a pot and boiling water poured on it. This pot, which is made to fit into a tea kettle, is placed in the kettle, and the coffee is cooked from 10 to 20 minutes, the water in the kettle boiling all the time. This will make a clear and delicious drink. Tea. There are three varieties of the tea plant. Both black and green tea can be prepared from them all. Green tea is made from leaves which are dried quickly. and black from leaves which have first been allowed to stand 12 hours or more before roasting. The leaves wilt and grow moist in that time, and that is what gives the dark and peculiar appearance to this tea. In making tea, the pot should be earthen, rinsed with boiling water, and left to stand a few moments on the stove to dry.
Put in the tea leaves and let the pot stand a few minutes longer. Pour on boiling water, leaving the pot standing where it will be at the boiling point, yet will not boil for from three to five minutes. For moderate strength, use one teaspoonful of tea to half a pint of water. If the water is soft, it should be used as soon as it boils, for boiling causes all the gases which flavor the water to escape. But if the water is hard, it is best to boil from 20 to 30 minutes. The gases escape from hard water also, but boiling causes the mineral matter, which hardens the water, to settle on the bottom of the kettle, and the water becomes softer. Lemonade. Good lemonade can be made with half a pint of lemon juice, extracted with a squeezer and strained, three pints of water and a generous pint of sugar.
Have the drink cold. Hot lemonade is highly recommended for a cold. A glass can be made with the juice of a lemon, one large tablespoon of sugar, and a cupful of boiling water. Drink it hot.
-
4 04 - The Curse of Education: Flourishing Mediocrity 10:39
The Curse of Education by Harold E. Ghost.
Chapter One. Flourishing Mediocrity. Humanity is rapidly becoming less the outcome of a natural process of development and more and more the product of an organized educational plan. The average educated man possesses no real individuality. He is simply a manufactured article bearing the stamp of the maker. Year by year, this fact is becoming more emphasized. During the past century, almost every civilized country applied itself fervently to the invention of a national plan of education, with the result that the majority of mankind are compelled to swallow a uniform prescription of knowledge made up for them by the state. Now, there is a great outcry that England is being left in this educational race.
Other nations have got more exact systems. Where the British child is only stuffed with six pounds of fact, the German and French schools contrived to cram seven pounds into their pupils. Consequently, Germany and France are getting ahead of us, and unless we wish to be beaten in the international race, it is asserted that we must bring our own educational system up to the continental standard. Before going deeply into this vital question, it is just as well to consider what these education systems have really done for mankind. There is a proverb, as excellent as it is ancient, which says that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. No doubt, learned theoretical treatises upon the scope and aim of the educational methods are capital things in their way, but they tell us nothing of the effect of these systematic teaching and cramming upon the world at large.
If we wish to ascertain them, To begin with, the dirt of great men is so remarkable that it scarcely needs comment. People are constantly expressing the fear that the age of intellectual giant has passed away altogether. This is particularly obvious in political life. Since the days of Gladstone and Desirelli, parliamentary debate has sunk to the most hopeless level of mediocrity. The tradition of men such as Pitt Fogg, Pommerson, Peel, and others sound at the present day almost like ancient mythology. Yet the supposed benefits of education are not only now field to all, but have been compulsorily conferred upon most nations. Nevertheless, even Prussian pedagogues have never succeeded in producing another Bismarck, and France has ground away at her educational mill for generations, with the result that the supply of Napoleons has distinctly diminished.
Look at the method by which our public service is recruited. Who are the men to whom the administration of all important departments of government is entrusted, and how are they selected? They are simply individuals who have succeeded in obtaining most marks in public competitive examinations, that is to say, men whose brains have been more effectively stuffed with facts and mechanical knowledge than were the brains of their unsuccessful competitors. There is no question when a candidate presents himself for a post in the diplomatic service or in one of the government offices whether he possesses tact or administrative ability or knowledge of the world. All that is demanded out of him is that his mind should be cramped with so many points of avadufa of Latin, Greek, mathematics, history, geography, etc., acquired in such a way that he will forget, within a couple of years, every fact that has been pestled into him.
For every vacancy in the various departments of the administration, there are dozens or even scores of applicants, and the candidate selected for the post is the one whose mind has been most successfully subjected to this process of overcramming and consequently most effectually ruined for all the practical purposes of life. Now, To whatever cause it may be ascribed, there can be no doubt that the general level throughout the various branches of the public service is one of mediocrity. We are not surrounded, faithful and devoted, as our public servants are universally admitted to be by administrative geniuses. Facts point altogether the other way. Great national catastrophes like the blunders and miscalculations that have characterized the conduct of the war in South Africa have always resulted in making the most uncomfortable revelations concerning the inefficiency of more than one important department of government.
The war office has long since become a public scandal, and if the truth were known about the inner domesticity of more than one great administrative office, the susceptibilities of the nation would be still further shocked and outraged. Fortunately, however it may be unfortunately, government line-in is usually watched at home, and it is only in times of great emergency that the truth leaks out to the general consternation. When this does happen, there is a great outcry about the inefficiency of this or that branch of the public service. The government in power waits to see if the agitation dies a natural death, and if it is successfully kept up, a sort of pretense at reform takes place. There is a reshuffle.
Fresh names are given to old abusers, incompetent officials exchange posts, and a new building is erected at the public expense. Then all goes on as heretofore. Nobody seems to think of making an inquiry into the constitution of public service itself. But until this is done, no real reform at any permanent value can possibly be effected. It is not the nomenclature of appointments, the subdivision of departmental work, and such matter of details that stand in need of the reformer. The titles and duties of the several officials are of secondary importance. It is not in them that the evils of bad administrations are to be located. The fault lies with the officials themselves, who are the victims of this stupid system which has placed them in the position they occupy.
The education they have received has, in the first case, unfitted them for the performance of any but mechanical and routine work, and the strain of a competitive examination involving the most unintellectual and brain-paralyzing process of cram has probably destroyed the faculty of initiative, which should be But it is not a distinguishing characteristic of the administrative official. Herein lies the secret of all opposition to progress. It is the permanent official who needs reforming. He is the embodiment of routine and conservatism, because he is the embodiment of mediocrity. Progress means ideas, and mediocrity does not deal in them. It has been furnished instead by a systematic course of instruction with the sufficient equipment of ideas of other people to last its lifetime.
Whilst we fill our public service with specially prepared mediocrity, the administrative departments will remain reactionary. And, as long as education is synonymous with cramming on an organized plan, it will continue to produce mediocrity. The Army of Oats, at the present moment, an admirable object lesson in this connection. The result of cramming young men as a preparation for a profession which demands, more than any other, individual initiative and independence, have become painfully apparent upon the field of battle. One of our foremost generals has come home from the campaign, declaring the necessity of both officers and men being trained to think and act for themselves. This was one, perhaps, the chief of the great lessons which this war has taught us.
But here again, no useful reforms can be achieved by alterations in the drill book. Boys are stuffed with facts before they go to Sandhurst, and when they get there, they are crammed in special subjects. The whole object of the process is to enable candidates to pass examinations and not to produce good officers. The effect here is the same as elsewhere. A quantity of useless and some useful knowledge is drilled into the pupil in such a manner that the mind retains nothing that has been put into it. And to make matters worse, all this is done at the expense of retarding the proper development of faculties, which would be of incalculable value to the soldier. Most of the blunders of the war are, in fact, attributable to want of common sense.
And common sense consists in the capacity of an individual to think for himself and to exercise his judgment. Educational methods, which in the majority of cases appear to destroy this faculty altogether, are clearly pernicious. Common sense is the most valuable gift with which man can be endowed. It is the very essence of genius, for it consists in the application of intelligence to every detail, and the highest order of intellect can accomplish no more than that. Yet, it is the rarest of all attributes, for the very reason that it is deliberately destroyed by the conventional methods of bringing up children and instructing youth. Therefore, before we can hope to obtain a supply of self-reliant officers and men, we must see some radical change in the very principles upon which modern methods of education are founded.
Wherever we go, we find this curse of mediocrity. In the professions, at the bar, in the pulpit, amongst physicians, it is apparent everywhere. They are clever men, of course, but the very fact that their names spring at once prominently to mind is in itself a proof that ability is exceptional. Some people, of course, accepting the world as they find it, may think it very unreasonable to expect able men to be plentiful in all walks of life. That is, to my mind, the chief pathos of the situation. It has come to be accepted that the world must be filled with the great majority of very commonplace people, even amongst the educated classes. No doubt it is filled at the present moment with a very vast preponderance of conventional minds, manufactured to meet the supposed requirements of our complicated civilization.
But I deny that this need be the case. On the contrary, we are surrounded by all sides of ability, by great possibilities of individual development, even by genius. And our education systems are busily engaged in the work of destroying this precious material, substituting facts for ideas, forcing the mind away from its natural bent, and manufacturing a machine instead of a man.
-
5 05 - The French and British at Three Rivers 15:36
The French and British at Three Rivers, prepared by the staff of the Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Tatiana Ciccilla. After the discovery of America, four European states—England, France, Holland, and Spain—laid claim to various portions of the North American continent. The French claims were largely based upon the discovery of the St. Lawrence by Cartier in 1521, and subsequent exploration of the interior of the continent by Champlain, LaSalle, and other Frenchmen. Ultimately, the territory which the French preempted included the St.
Lawrence Valley, the Great Lakes region, the territory extending southward to the Ohio River, the territory immediately west of the Mississippi River, and that part of the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico adjacent to the mouth of the Mississippi River. The French exploited the fur-trading and fur-producing possibilities of this vast empire. French priests sought the conversion of the Indian inhabitants to the Catholic faith. French military forces established a chain of forts or posts extending along the Great Lakes, down the Wabash River, and along the Mississippi River to the Gulf. Numerous Frenchmen came to this interior region, but few French women accompanied them. Consequently, French settlements were relatively few and weak.
Many Frenchmen formed temporary or permanent unions with Indian women, and in the next generation, a considerable number of half-breeds were born of these unions. Important French posts in the area were Presque Isle, Mackinac, Detroit, Post-Miami, Vincennes, New Orleans, Kaskaskia, and St. Louis. The environs of the Indian village of Kekyonga Located in the present lakeside section of Fort Wayne, were selected by the French for the location of Post Miami, because of combined strategic, economic, and geographic significance. The village was located at the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Mary's rivers. It was, therefore, on water highways connecting with Lake Erie and tapping the interior of Michigan and Ohio.
Kekeongo was only a few miles from the Wabash River with the St. Lawrence, Mississippi watershed lying between the two. A shallow lake, since drained out of existence, extended southwest from Kekeonga to present-day Wayndale, and was navigable by canoe during part of the year. These factors inevitably made the confluence of the rivers a portage for east and west traffic between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. Pelts and trade goods passing back and forth from the east to the southwest and in reverse could travel by canoe all the way between Lake Erie and New Orleans, with the exception of a few miles at Kekeonga. This short break in navigation made the portage necessary. The geography of the rivers made it possible.
Here men were forced to carry canoe and cargo from the navigable waters at the confluence of the rivers to the headwaters of the Wabash rivers. The portage at Kekianga brought relative prosperity to the Indian rulers of this region, because a tribute for portage was levied upon every canoe load of pelts and trade goods. Possession of this valuable location afforded the Miami Indians at Kekianga political importance, too, because economic advantage always makes for political interest. The political power controlling the portage, therefore, dominated the commercial intercourse of the area. The French immediately sensed the importance of Kekianga and located their post nearby at a very early date.
The date of the coming of the first white man to this area is unknown. Some believe that Champlain saw three rivers as early as 1614 or 1615. The earliest extant map, dated 1632, indicates that the Maumee River was then known to French cartographers. Other maps drawn in 1654, 1656, and 1674 chart the rather thorough exploration of the territory by the French. There is a possibility that LaSalle was on these rivers during the period between 1679 and 1681, for he seemed to have known about the Wabash-Maumee portage. The Frenchmen came on a peaceful mission. He sought trade with the Indians and brought valuable commercial articles, which were strange, new, and desirable to the Red Man. The Frenchman was usually willing to live with the Indian on terms of equality and to take an Indian woman in marriage.
He wanted no occupation of the land. He did not seek to dispossess the Indian. His missionaries sought no material advantage. At first, these practices won the friendship and confidence of the simple child of the forest, and the relations between Frenchman and Indian were usually amicable. French influence, then, in the interior of America and the region known today as the Great Middle West was paramount in the beginning because of primacy of arrival. Meanwhile, the land-hungry English on the Atlantic coast rapidly expanded over the entire seaboard, driving out the Indians. The Appalachian Mountains long proved a barrier to English expansion westward. Not until the English could acquire a suitable beast of burden for conveying freight and merchandise across the mountains would French influence in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys be jeopardized.
The date of establishment of the first French post at the Confluence of the Rivers is veiled in the mists of the past. We only know, as these mists lifted, that the French were located here in a small fort, blockhouse, or trading post which was named Post Miami. Probably of greater commercial and religious, rather than political importance, it was situated on the St. Mary's River near the present crossing of the Nickel Plate Railroad. The French officer Bisseau may have been stationed here as commandant in charge of French interests as early as 1697. Cadillac passed through the portage on his way southward from Detroit in 1707. Already English influence was beginning to be felt in the area. The Miami Indian population in and about the village approximated 400 persons.
They subsisted from their plantings among the Maumee River, from forest products and hunting, and from their trade with the French. Francois Margan succeeded Syrabusso as commandant at Post-Miami. He extended French influence and power by establishing first Post-Wiatenon at the present location of Wabash, Indiana, later Post-Vincennes on the present site of the city of Vincennes. During the first quarter of the 18th century, the English began seriously to undermine French influence with the Indians. This rivalry became more bitter and culminated in an Indian uprising against the French, who were not destined to dominate the portage much longer. Soon they learned that the English had erected a stronghold on Laramie Creek, a few miles from the present site of Sydney, Ohio.
Chief Sanoskot, known also as Chief Nicholas of the Hurons, fell under British control. He made war against the French and attacked a number of French posts on the frontier. In alliance with the Miamis, the Ottawas attacked post-Miami and partially burned the buildings. Ensign-du-Ville, the commandant, was absent in Detroit. The eight men forming the garrison were captured, although two of them later escaped to Detroit. To a certain extent, the French and Miami soon adjusted their relations because of mutual need for trade. However, the relationship thereafter was never sincerely friendly. The ruined fort was partially restored, but gave much evidence of neglect. Fr. Jean de Boncamp, recorded in his observations of the fort, made in 1749, Griswold's Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, Volume One, Page Forty Six, quotes the priest as follows.
The Fort of the Miamis was in a very bad condition when we reached it. Most of the Palisades were decayed and fallen into ruin. There were eight houses, or, to speak more correctly, eight miserable huts, which only the desire of making money could make endurable. The French there, number 22, all of them, including the commandant, had the fever. Monsieur Raymond did not approve of the situation of the fort and maintained that it should be placed on the bank of the St. Joseph, a scant league from the present site. He wished to show me the spot, but the hindrances of our departure prevented me from going hither. All I could do for him was to trace the plan for his new fort. The latitude of the old one is 41 degrees and 29 minutes.
Captain Raymond lost little time in relocating his fort. The site he chose is the high ground near the present intersection of the St. Joe Boulevard and Delaware Avenue. The old buildings of the original French fort served as a nucleus for a settlement, and were now occupied by the few Miami Indians who still remained on friendly terms with the French. The little village came to be known as Coldfoot's Village, in honor of Miami Chief Coldfoot. In the face of waning prestige, the French made one spirited attempt to check the English. Under the leadership of Charles Langlade, a few Frenchmen and two hundred Chippewas and Ottawas moved down from Detroit to attack Fort Picoilany. Assembling their forces at the portage near Kekionga, they turned into the St.
Mary's River, and thence marched overland, unheralded, toward Piccololani. After a surprise attack, the fort was reduced. In celebration of the victory, and in vengeance for his friendship with the British, the Indians enjoyed a cannibal feast on the body of La Demoiselle, chief of the Piankachas. This victory temporarily restored the prestige of France with the Miamis at the portage. The defeat of Braddock in 1755 still further diminished the influence of the English among the Indians. Thus, the battle of propaganda and bribery for the favor of Indian tribes seesawed back and forth. The pendulum, however, was swinging in favor of the British. During the next few years, British political emissaries and traitors made ever-increasing trouble for the French.
These machinations foreshadowed the destruction of French power in the Ohio Valley. The small French garrison and French half-breed families living in the present Spyrun Avenue neighborhood led a precarious existence. The local Indians, aided and abetted by the English, and well fortified with whiskey, hitherto denied them by the French, now liberally dispensed by the British, increasingly harassed their former French allies. In 1756, the Seven Years' War, known in American history as the French and Indian War, broke out between France and England. One of the prizes at stake in the contest was the domination of the North American continent. After the fall of Quebec, concomitant with the defeat of General Montcalm by General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, French authority in North America passed to the English.
Shortly thereafter, the garrison in Detroit surrendered to the English. In December 1760, Lieutenant Butler, commanding a detachment of 20 English soldiers, received the surrender of Fort Miami. Thereafter, the Union Jack flew over the Maumee portage. During the period beginning in 1760 and ending with the termination of the Revolutionary War, British policy seems to have emphasized commerce and conciliation with the local Indians. British military forces were never strong in the area, and now that the French were vanquished, the stockade no longer possessed military value. Fort Miami fell into decay. A brief era of good feeling between the Indians and the British followed. Soon, however, there were stirrings among the Red Men.
The great Pontiac, chief of the Ottawa's, a man of superior intelligence and great skill and statecraft, began inciting the Indians to expel the British from the entire Western country. For a long time, the conspiracy and war preparations continued in secret. Not until 1763 were they revealed. Soon, the Indians attacked and laid siege to all the British forts on the entire frontier. They captured Fort Sandusky, St. Joseph, Micomackinac, Wiatanon, and Miami. At least one romantic but tragic incident occurred in connection with the attack on Post-Miami. Ensign Holmes, English commandant at the isolated British fort on the St. Joseph River, was a young and very lonely man. Rumor has it that he shared few common interests with the men of his garrison.
He sought feminine companionship and found favor in the eyes of an Indian maiden who reciprocated his affections. Let Parkman tell the story. On the twenty-seventh day of May, a young Indian girl who lived with the commandant came to tell him that a squaw lay dangerously ill in a wigwam near the fort, and urged him to come to her relief. Having confidence in the girl, Holmes forgot his caution and followed her out of the fort. Pitched on the edge of the meadow, in present-day Lakeside, hidden from view by an intervening spur of woodland, stood a great number of Indian wigwams. When Holmes came in sight of them, his treacherous conductress pointed out that in which the sick woman lay. He walked on without suspicion, but as he drew near, two guns flashed from behind the hut and stretched him lifeless on the grass.
The shots were heard at the fort, and the sergeant rashly went out to learn the cause. He was immediately taken prisoner, amid exulting yells and whoopings. The soldiers in the fort climbed upon the palisades to look out, when Godefroy, a Canadian, and two other white men made their appearance and summoned them to surrender, promising that if they did so, their lives would be spared. Ultimately, Pontiac's conspiracy was quelled, and uneasy peace was restored on the frontier. At the beginning of the American Revolution, the British were confronted with the problem of retaining the Indians as allies against the Americans. The savages realized the need of British subsidies and soon became genuinely attached to the Redcoats.
In October 1778, Governor Hamilton's army, advancing from Detroit against the forces of George Rogers Clark and southern Indiana, passed over the portage. The only military action, however, which occurred here during the Revolutionary War, is known as Le Balm's Massacre. Augustus Le Balm, one of the volunteer French officers who had accompanied the Marquis de Lafayette to America, was commissioned a colonel in General Washington's army. In October, he appeared at Kaskaskia, and then under American domination since its capture by George Rogers Clark. He gathered a considerable force of Frenchmen and Indians and advanced northward, his objective being the expulsion of the British from Detroit. Arriving at the Indian settlement at Three Rivers, LeBalm and his men plundered the village and destroyed a great deal of property.
At close of day, he retired with his 103 men and camped on the Abwat River. In the dead of night, an Indian force, under the leadership of Little Turtle, attacked the invader, destroyed nearly a half of the Little force, and compelled the remainder to flee. The incident has little significance except as the initial engagement in a series of bloody victories, won by Little Turtle and the Miami Indians against the Americans. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 made the United States nominally paramount in the Ohio Valley. However, the British, on the pretext of bad faith on the part of the American government, continued to occupy forts in the area which they had contracted to evacuate under terms of the treaty.
Among the forts they still held illegally were Presque Isle, Mackinac, Detroit, and Fort Miami, near Toledo. From the vantage point of these forts, British military officers and diplomatic representatives continued friendly relations with the local Indians. By moral suasion, the Indian was influenced to believe that his friends were British rather than American. Through gifts of food, equipment, and arms, the Indian was relieved of problems of logistics which might place him at a disadvantage with any American military force. The Indians massacred hundreds of American settlers on the western frontier and burned and pillaged their homes. Under the leadership of Little Turtle and others, in 1790 and 1791, Indian warriors inflicted overwhelming defeats upon the armies of American generals Harmer and St.
Clair. American influence and prestige were at a low ebb, indeed, and it appeared that the Ohio Valley, with the portage at Three Rivers, might fall by default to the British after all. In order to prevent this calamity, General Wayne undertook his campaign westward into the Indian country from Pittsburgh, He soundly defeated the Indians at Fallen Timbers in 1794. Wayne's expedition culminated in the building of the fort which bears his name, and in the formal occupation under the American flag in September and October, 1794. End of The French and British at Three Rivers. Prepared by the staff of the Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County.
-
6 06 - Gulls, Human Wildlife Conflicts & Overview of the Species 17:58
Gulls Human-Wild-Life Conflicts and Overview of the Species. From Gulls by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, May 2018. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.
Human-Wild-Life Conflicts. Abundant gull populations in North America have led to a variety of conflicts with people. Gulls cause damage at aquaculture facilities and other properties, and often collide with aircraft. Their use of structures on and near water results in excessive amounts of bird droppings on boats and docks. Their presence near outdoor dining establishments, swimming beaches, and recreational sites can lead to negative interactions with people. Large amounts of gulf fecal material pollutes water and beaches, resulting in drinking water contamination and swim bans. A combination of dispersal techniques, exclusion, and limited lethal control may reduce damage to an acceptable level.
Aquaculture Gulls feeding at fish hatcheries, mariculture beds, and baitfish production sites may result in significant losses for aquaculture producers. They may also impact salmonid fry, especially at passage facilities associated with dams in the Pacific Northwest. Gulls loafing at seafood processing facilities may create a nuisance for employees. and contaminate seafood products with fecal material at outdoor staging areas while items are awaiting processing. Structures Gulls nesting on rooftops often indirectly damage the roof, as well as the building, due to accumulations of nesting material in rooftop drains that prevent the draining of water from the roof. The resulting backup of rainwater may lead to structural damage to the roof, including leakage, water damage and rot, mold, and excessive water weight on roof support structures.
Human health and safety. Gull use of structures on and near water results in excessive amounts of bird droppings on boats and docks in marinas. And the presence of gulls near outdoor dining establishments, swimming beaches, and recreational sites creates negative interactions with people. Research has documented that gulls can be a source of fecal contamination, such as Escherichia coli and Salmonella isolates, in water and beaches, resulting in contamination of drinking water and swim bans. In addition, Buildup of droppings, nesting materials, and feathers on rooftops near ventilation intakes can result in unwanted odors and the intake of irritants affecting the respiratory health of workers and creating an unsanitary work environment.
Large numbers of gulls flocking around landfills is a distraction and safety risk to heavy equipment operators and truck drivers. Gulls are frequently involved in collisions with aircraft, resulting in dangerous conditions for people, both in the aircraft and on the ground. From 1990 to 2015, gulls were involved in at least 10,586 bird strikes, with 2,188 of those strikes involving multiple birds. Fifteen of those strikes resulted in injuries to twenty-two people. Their large size, looping flight, flocking behavior, and propensity to feed and loaf on grasslands and paved surfaces at coastal airports make them a significant strike threat. During the nesting season, especially after chicks hatch, gulls may dive and strike people on the head, If they come too close to nests, this behavior is problematic near nesting colonies where people may be working on rooftops, performing building maintenance or security.
Natural Resources. Gulls may be detrimental to some shorebird and waterbird species of concern because they prey on eggs and chicks. For example, Predation by laughing, herring, and great black-backed gulls contributes to declines or lower productivity of some species along the Atlantic coast. Gulls are a primary predator of nests and chicks of terns, skimmers, and other colonial nesting birds from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine. Nuisance. Gulls habituate to the presence of people. and may become a nuisance for sunbathers or diners at outdoor establishments when food is accessible. Species overview. Identification. The term gull refers to bird species that belong to the family Leridae. Gulls nest colonially, sometimes with other colonial nesting species, Interspersed within the breeding colony, gulls often are associated with oceans, seas, and large freshwater water bodies.
Twenty-four different species of gulls can be found across North America. The eight gull species most often associated with human-wildlife conflicts in the United States include the following. Herring gull, Laris Argentatus. Laughing gull. Leucofeus atrysilla. Ring-billed gull. Laris delawarensis. Great black-backed gull. Laris marinus. California gull. Laris californicus. Franklin's gull. Leucofeus pipixkin. Bonaparte's gull. Choricocephalus philadelphia. Glaucus-winged gull. Laris glouscens. Physical description. Male and female gulls of the same species are similar in appearance. Gulls are distinguished by their webbed feet, and adults generally have white-body plumage, with the amount of black and brown plumage on the wings and back varying among species and age classes.
Juvenile birds have varying amounts of black or brown mottled body plumage, interspersed with varying amounts of white feathers. Gulls range in size, from the diminutive Bonaparte's gull, eleven inches long, thirty-eight inch wingspan, and about half a pound, to the largest species, the great black-backed gull, twenty-four inches long. 60, 5-inch, wingspan, and up to four pounds. Range. Gulls are found throughout North America, usually near water bodies, such as oceans, estuaries, and freshwater lakes. The herring gull is a year-round resident on the Great Lakes and east coasts of North America, from Newfoundland to North Carolina. Winter distribution is associated with coastal areas and large water bodies along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf Coasts, the Caribbean Islands, and Mississippi River Valley.
The Laughing Gull breeding range stretches from Maine to Texas along the coast. Laughing Gulls generally winter along the southern Atlantic coast from North Carolina to the Gulf Coast. and eastern and western Central American coasts. The Ring-billed Gulls breeding range is primarily Lake Champlain in Vermont, and the St. Lawrence River drainage of New York, Quebec, and Ontario, the Great Lakes region, and westward into the northern Rockies and western Canadian provinces. Its wintering range is the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, lower Mississippi River Valley, and southern Great Plains. The great black-backed gull, common in the northeastern United States, breeds locally along the Atlantic coast from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, north to Labrador and Baffin Island, and locally around the Great Lakes.
In winter, this species may be found throughout its breeding range and south to South Carolina. In addition, it winters in increasing numbers along the Gulf of Mexico. The California gull is found throughout the interior western region of North America, from California in the south to northwest territories in the north. The Franklin gull's breeding range is primarily within portions of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and parts of North Dakota. There are smaller breeding colonies scattered in the northern Rockies. The primary winter range is along the Pacific coast of Chile and Peru. Bonaparte's gull winters in large flocks in coastal areas along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts and eastern Great Lakes, but breeds around ponds, bogs, bays, and fjords in the taiga and boreal forests of Alaska and Yukon, Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
The Glaucus-winged gull is an abundant resident along the northwestern coast of North America, where it breeds along coastal islands and cliffs from the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands, Alaska, south to Oregon. It casually nests in fresh water in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. Voice and Sounds. Gulls have a wide variety of calls that vary based on the age of the bird and situation in which a call is made. Calls are given for courtship, breeding, alarm, feeding, and in some cases for no apparent associated behavior. Reproduction. Most gulls are gregarious nesters on sand and gravel-covered shorelines, Islands and flat rooftops. They require only a small territory, and colonies often contain thousands of nesting pairs.
Bonaparte's and great black-backed gulls are are the exception. They are solitary breeders, or breed in small colonies away from human settlements. Sexually mature gulls generally return and nest in the region where they learned to fly. Gull nests vary by species. In general, they are built of grasses and other vegetation, which may include sticks. Nests are found on the ground or on rooftops. Gulls produce three to five eggs per nest. Most species of gulls reach breeding age in two to three years, but some do not breed until they are four to five years old. Like other migratory birds, gulls generally breed in the northern parts of their range and winter in the southern portions of North America.
However, species such as ring-billed gulls do move hundreds of miles eastward and westward within just a few days during the summer. Most gull species nest in large colonies that include hundreds or thousands of nests. Most large colony nesting sites are on islands, but some western gull species will nest in large colonies adjacent to remote freshwater lakes. Depending on gull species, nest sites tend to be sparsely vegetated or have no vegetation. Mortality. Gulls are generally long-lived birds that may survive for 10 to 30 years. Annual survival rates ranged from 70 to 94 percent, with juvenile birds having lower survival than adults. Population status. Between 1966 and 2012, some gull populations, such as Herring and Franklin's gull in the United States, appeared to decline, while others, such as Ring-billed and California gull, remained stable.
General species status is of low conservation concern for herring, ring-billed, laughing, and great black-backed gulls. Many gull species are considered overabundant or common. Typical high gull densities are recorded in localized areas, such as urban rooftop nesting colonies and landfills. Habitat Gulls may be found in any water body in North America. In addition, gulls loaf and forage in open spaces, such as plowed or grassy fields and parking lots. Behavior. Gulls often spend nights in open water or secluded areas, such as islands or rooftops, that are not prone to predation. They fly inland to feed and loaf during the day. Gulls are active all day, with daily activity peaking at dawn and dusk.
Gulls will fly at night, especially around roosting areas on large water bodies. Gulls are migratory birds, with some species migrating long distances between nesting and wintering areas. Although most gulls migrate on a north-south gradient between nesting and wintering areas, ring-billed gulls Migrate to the Great Lakes region for nesting and eastward to the Mid-Atlantic coast for the winter. Gull nesting and feeding activities generally are associated with wetland habitats. These habitats are important stopping points during migration. Food Habits. Gulls are adaptable, opportunistic, omnivorous feeders that readily switch food types Based on availability and accessibility. Gulls forage on land and on water.
Feeding on aquatic animals, terrestrial invertebrates, small vertebrates, carrion, plant remains, refuse, and human food. Gulls forage on eggs and young of other nesting water birds. For instance, herring and great black-backed gulls eat shorebird chicks and waterfowl ducklings. Bonaparte and other Western gull species eat young salmon, contributing to smaller runs of smolts. Herring gulls have developed a feeding strategy of dropping bivalves onto hard surfaces to break the shell and access the soft tissues inside. Adult ring-billed gulls nesting in the Great Lakes have been known to travel an average of fifteen miles to exploit human-related food sources. Smaller species, such as Ring-billed Laughing and Franklin's Gulls, forage in the air on flying insects.
Legal Status. Gulls are classified as a migratory bird species, and are protected by federal and, in most cases, state laws. In the United States, gulls may be taken only with a permit issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Occasionally, an additional permit is required from the State Wildlife Management Agency. Permits are issued only after dispersal and other non-lethal damage management methods have been employed and proven ineffective at resolving the conflicts. No federal permit is needed, however, to frighten or mechanically exclude gulls. End of Gulls, Human-Wildlife Conflicts and Overview of the Species, from Gulls by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, May 2018.
-
7 07 - Herman Melville's Whale 15:02
Herman Melville's Whale, from the London Spectator magazine of October 1851, as reprinted in the New York International magazine.
Herman Melville's Whale. The new nautical story, by the always successful author of Taipe, As for its name-giving subject, a monster first introduced to the world of print by Mr. J. N. Reynolds, 10 or 15 years ago, in a paper for the Knickerbocker, titled Mocha Dick. Well, we received a copy when it was too late to review it ourselves for this number of the International, and, therefore, make use of a notice of it, which we find in the London Spectator. This C-Novel is a singular medley. Obnaval observation, magazine article writing, satiric reflection upon the conventionalisms of civilized life, and Rhapsody Run Mad. So far as the nautical parts are appropriate and unmixed, the portraiture is truthful and interesting.
Some of the satire, especially in the early parts, is biting and reckless. The chapter spinning is various in character, now powerful from the vigorous and Fertile fancy of the author, now little more than empty, though sounding phrases. The Rhapsody belongs to word-mongering, where ideas are the staple. Where it takes the shape of narrative or dramatic fiction, it is phantasmal, an attempted description of what is impossible in nature and without probability in art. It repels the reader instead of attracting him. The elements of the story are a South Sea whaling voyage. Narrated by Ishmael, one of the crew of the ship Pequod from Nantucket. Its probable portions consist of the usual sea matter, that branch of the industrial marine, embracing the preparations for departure, the voyage, the chase and capture of whale, with the economy of cutting up, etc., and the peculiar discipline of the service.
This matter It's expanded by a variety of digressions on the nature and characteristics of the sperm whale, the history of the fishery, and similar things, in which a little knowledge has made the excuse for a vast many words. The voyage is introduced by several chapters in which life in American seaports is rather broadly depicted. The Marvelous injures the book by disjointing the narrative, as well as by its inherent want of interest, at least as managed by Mr. Melville. In the superstition of some whalers, grounded upon the malicious foresight which occasionally characterizes the attacks of the sperm fish upon the boats sent to capture it, there is a white whale which possesses supernatural power.
To capture or even to hurt it is beyond the art of man. The skill of the whaler is useless. The harpoon does not wound it. It exhibits a contemptuous strategy in its attacks upon the boats of its pursuers, and happy is the vessel where only loss of limb or a single life attends its chase. Ahab, the master of the Pequod, a mariner of long experience, stern resolve, and indomitable courage, the high hero of romance, in short, transferred to a whale ship. The loss exasperates him, and by long brooding over it, his reason becomes shaken. In this condition, he undertakes the voyage, making the chase of his fishy antagonist the sole abject of his thoughts, and, so far as he can without exciting overt insubordination among his officers, the object of his proceedings.
Such a groundwork is hardly natural enough for a regular-built novel, though it might form a tale. It properly managed, but Mr. Melville's mysteries provoke wonder at the author rather than terror at the creation. The soliloquies and dialogues of Ahab, in which the author attempts delineating the wild imaginings of monomania and exhibiting some profoundly speculative view of things in general, induce weariness or skipping. While the whole scheme mars, as we have said, the nautical continuity of story, greatly assisted by various chapters of a bookmaking kind. Perhaps the earliest chapters are the best, although they contain little adventure. Their topics are fresher to English readers than the whale chase, and they have more direct satire.
One of the leading personages in the voyage is Queequeg, a South Sea Islander that Ishmael falls in with at New Bedford, and with whom he forms a bosom friendship. Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the west and south. It is not down in any map. True places never are. While yet a new-hatched savage, running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats as if he were a green sapling, even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, learnt a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a high chief. King. His uncle, a high priest. And on the maternal side, he boasted aunts, who were the wives of unconquerable warriors.
There was excellent blood in his veins, royal stuff, though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth. A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit, and not all the king, his father's influence, could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to the distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef, and on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand, and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out, gained her side with one backward dash of his foot, capsized and sank his canoe, climbed up the chains and, throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring bolt there and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard, suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists. Queequeg was the son of a king, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage, this sea prince of Wales, never saw the captain's cabin. They put him down among the sailors and made a whaleman of him. But, like the Tsar Peter, content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom, so he told me, he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were.
And more than that, still better than they were. But alas, the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked, infinitely more so than all his father's heathens, arrived at it last in old Sag Harbor and singing what the sailors did there, and then going on to Nantucket and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also. Poor Queeque gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians. Aldaya pagan. The strongest point of the book is its characters. Ahab, indeed, is a melodramatic exaggeration, and Ishmael is little more than a mouthpiece. But the harpooners, the mates, and several of the seamen are truthful portraitures of the sailor, as modified by the whaling service.
The persons ashore are equally good, though they are soon lost sight of. The two Quaker owners are the author's means for a hit at the religious hypocrisies. Captain Bildad, an old sea dog, has got rid of everything pertaining to the meeting house save an occasional thou and thee. Captain Peleg, in American phrase, professes religion. The following extract exhibits the two men when Ishmael is shipped. I began to think that it was high time to settle with myself at what terms I would be willing to engage for the voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no wages but all hands, including the captain, received certain shares of the profits, called leys, and that these leys were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship's company.
I was also aware that, being a green-handed whaling, my own lay would not be very large, but, considering that I was used to the sea, could steer a ship, splice a rope, And all that, I made no doubt that from all I had heard, I should be offered at least the 275th lay, that is, the 275th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage, whatever that might eventually amount to. And though the 275th lay was what they called a rather long lay, yet it was better than nothing, and if we had a lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out on it. Not to speak of my three years beef and board, for which I would not have to pay one stiffer. It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely fortune.
And so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am one of those that never take on about princely fortunes and am quite content that the world is ready to board and lodge me while I'm putting up at this grim sign of the thundercloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the 275th lay would be about the fair thing. But would not have been surprised had I been offered the two hundredth, considering I was of a broad-shouldered make. But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about receiving a generous share of the profits was this. Sure, I had heard something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad, how that they, being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left Nearly the whole management of the ship's affair to these two, and I did not know but that that stingy old Bildad might have a deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board, the Pequod quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible, as if it was his own fireside.
Now, while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jackknife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings, Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself that of his book. "'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where's moth?' "'Lay, Captain Bildad,' interrupted Peleg. "'What do you say? What lay shall we give this young man?' "'Thou knowest best,' was the sepulchral reply. "'The seven hundred and seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much, would it? Where moth and rust do corrupt but lay.' "'Lay indeed,' thought I. And such a lay, the seven hundred and seventy-seventh? Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I for one shall not lay up many lays here below.
Where moth and rust do corrupt, it was an exceedingly long lay, that indeed. And though from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration will show that, though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet when you come to make a teenth of it, You will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons. So I thought at the time. Why, must your eyes build at, cried Peddick. Thou dost not want to swindle this young man. He must have more than that. Seven hundred and seventy-seventh, again said Bildad, without lifting his eyes. And then when I'm mumbling.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. I am going to put him down for the three hundredth," said Peleg. Do you hear that, Bildad? The three hundredth lay, I say. Bildad put down his book, and turning solemnly toward him said, Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart, but thou must consider the duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship, widows and orphans, many of them. And that, if we too abundantly reward the labors of this young man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and those orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peddeg. Thou, Bildad, roared Peddeg, starting up and clattering about the cabin. Blast ye, Captain Bildad. If I had followed thy advice in these matters, I would have fore now had a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough to founder the largest ship.
That ever sailed round Cape Horn. Captain Peleg, said Bildad steadily, thy conscience may be drawing ten inches of water or ten fathoms, I can't tell. But as thou art still an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one, and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg. It is a canon with some critics that nothing should be introduced into a novel which it is physically impossible for the writer to have known. Thus, he must not describe the conversation of miners in a pit if they all perish. Mr. Melville hardly steers clear of this rule, and he continually violates another by beginning in the autobiographical form and changing ad libitum into the narrative.
His catastrophe overrides all rule. Not only is Ahab, with his boat's crew, destroyed in his last desperate attack upon the white whale, but the Pequot herself sinks with all on board into the depths of the illiminal ocean. Such is the go-ahead method. End of Herman Melville's Whale, from the New York International Magazine.
-
8 08 - Hussites 18:59
Hussites. The name given to the followers of John Huss. The Bohemian reformer. They were at first often called Wycliffeites, as the theological theories of Huss were largely founded on the teachings of Wycliffe. Huss indeed laid more stress on church reform than on theological controversy. On such matters he always writes as a disciple of Wycliffe. The Hussite movement may be said to have sprung from three sources, which are however closely connected. Bohemia, which had first received Christianity from the East, was from geographical and other causes long but very loosely connected with the Church of Rome. The connection became closer at the time when the schism with its violent controversies between the rival pontiffs, waged with the coarse invective customary to medieval theologians, had brought great discredit on the papacy.
The terrible rapacity of its representatives in Bohemia, which increased in proportion as it became more difficult to obtain money from Western countries, such as England and France, caused general indignation, and this was still further intensified by the gross immorality of the Roman priests. The Hussite movement was also a democratic one, an uprising of the peasantry against the landowners at a period when a third of the soil belonged to the clergy. Finally, national enthusiasm for the Slavic race contributed largely to its importance. The towns, in most cases creations of the rulers of Bohemia who had called in German immigrants, were, with the exception of the new town of Prague, mainly German, and, in consequence of the regulations of the university, Germans also held almost all the more important ecclesiastical offices, a condition of things greatly resented by the natives of Bohemia, which at this time had reached a high degree of intellectual development.
The Hussite movement assumed a revolutionary character as soon as the news of the death of Huss reached Prague. The knights and nobles of Bohemia and Moravia, who were in favour of church reform, sent to the council at Constance, September Second, Fourteen Fifteen, a protest known as the protestatio bohemorum, which condemned the execution of Huss in the strongest language. The attitude of Sigismund, king of the Romans, who sent threatening letters to Bohemia, declaring that he would shortly drown all Wycliffeites and Hussites, greatly incensed the people. Troubles broke out in various parts of Bohemia, and many Romanist priests were driven from their parishes. Almost from the first, the Hussites were divided into two sections, though many minor divisions also arose among them.
Shortly before his death, Huys had accepted a doctrine preached during his absence by his adherents at Prague, namely that of Utraquism, that is, the obligation of the faithful to receive communion in both kinds, Subutraque specie. This doctrine became the watchword of the moderate Hussites, who were known as the Utraquists, or Kalixtins, from Kalixt, the chalice, in Bohemian, Podobogi. While the more advanced Hussites were soon known as the Taborites, from the city of Tabor that became their centre. Under the influence of his brother Sigismund, king of the Romans, King Wenceslaus endeavoured to stem the Hussite movement. A certain number of Hussites, led by Nikolaos of Hus, no relation of John Hus, left Prague.
They held meetings in various parts of Bohemia, particularly at Usti, near the spot where the town of Tabor was founded soon afterwards. At these meetings, Sigismund was violently denounced, and the people everywhere prepared for war. In spite of the departure of many prominent Hussites, the troubles at Prague continued. On the Thirteenth of July, Fourteen, nineteen, when a Hussite procession, headed by the priest John of Jalivo, in German, Zellau, marched through the streets of Prague, stones were thrown at the Hussites from the windows of the town hall of the new town. The people, headed by John 1376 to 1424 through the Burgomaster and several town councilors who were the instigators of this outrage from the windows, and they were immediately killed by the crowd.
On hearing this news, King Wenceslaus was seized with an apoplectic fit, and died a few days afterwards. The death of the king resulted in renewed troubles in Prague, and in almost all parts of Bohemia. Many Romanists, mostly Germans, for they had almost all remained faithful to the papal cause, were expelled from the Bohemian cities. In Prague, in November, Fourteen, nineteen, severe fighting took place between the Hussites and the mercenaries, whom Queen Sophia, widow of Wenceslaus and regent after the death of her husband, had hurriedly collected. After a considerable part of the city had been destroyed, a truce was concluded on the Thirteenth of November. The nobles, who, though favourable to the Hussite cause, yet supported the regent, promised to act as mediators with Sigismund, while the citizens of Prague consented to restore to the royal forces the castle of Visehrat, which had fallen into their hands.
Žižka, who disapproved of this compromise, left Prague and retired to Blschen, Pilzen. Unable to maintain himself there, he marched to southern Bohemia, and after defeating the Romanists at Sudomersh, The first pitched battle of the Hussite wars, he arrived at Usti, one of the earliest meeting-places of the Hussites. Not considering its situation sufficiently strong, he moved to the neighboring new settlement of the Hussites, to which the biblical name of Tabor was given. Tabor soon became the center of the advanced Hussites, who differed from the Utraquists by recognizing only two sacraments, baptism and communion, and by rejecting most of the ceremonial of the Roman Church. The ecclesiastical organization of Tabor had a somewhat puritanical character, and the government was established on a thoroughly democratic basis.
Four captains of the people, Heytmane, were elected, one of whom was Zizka, and a very strictly military discipline was instituted. Sigismund, king of the Romans, had, by the death of his brother Wenceslaus, without issue, acquired a claim on the Bohemian crown, though it was then, and remained till much later, doubtful whether Bohemia was an hereditary or an elective monarchy. A firm adherent of the Church of Rome, Sigismund was successful in obtaining aid from the Pope. Martin V issued a bull on the 17th of March, Fourteen, Twenty, which proclaimed a crusade. For the destruction of the Wycliffeites, Hussites, and all other heretics in Bohemia. The vast army of crusaders, with which were Sigismund and many German princes, and which consisted of adventurers attracted by the hope of pillage from all parts of Europe, arrived before Prague on the 13th of June, and immediately began the siege of the city, which had, however, soon to be abandoned.
Negotiations took place for a settlement of the religious differences. The United Hussites formulated their demands in a statement known as the Articles of Prague. This document, the most important of the Hussite period, runs thus in the wording of the contemporary chronicler, Lorenz of Bresova. One. The word of God shall be preached and made known in the kingdom of Bohemia freely and in an orderly manner by the priests of the Lord. Two. The sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist shall be freely administered in the two kinds, that is, bread and wine, to all the faithful in Christ who are not precluded by mortal sin, according to the word and disposition of our Saviour. Three, the secular power over riches and worldly goods, which the clergy possesses in contradiction to Christ's precept, To the prejudice of its office and to the detriment of its secular arm shall be taken and withdrawn from it, and the clergy itself shall be brought back to the evangelical rule and an apostolic life such as that which Christ and his apostles led.
Four. All mortal sins, and in particular all public and other disorders which are contrary to God's law, shall in every rank of life Be duly and judiciously prohibited, and destroyed by those whose office it is. These articles which contained the essence of the Hussite doctrine were rejected by Sigismund, mainly through the influence of the papal legates, who considered them prejudicial to the authority of the Roman see. Hostilities therefore continued. Though Sigismund had retired from Prague, the castles of Vyshehrat and Hradchany remained in possession of his troops. The citizens of Prague laid siege to the Visehrad, and towards the end of October 1420, the garrison was on the point of capitulating through famine.
Sigismund attempted to relieve the fortress, but was decisively defeated by the Hussites on the 1st of November, near the village of Pancraz. The castles of Visehrad and Hradchany now capitulated, and shortly afterward almost all Bohemia fell into the hands of the Hussites. Internal troubles prevented them from availing themselves completely of their victory. At Prague, a demagogue, the priest John of Jolivo for a time obtained almost unlimited authority over the lower classes of the townsmen, and at Tabor, a communistic movement, that of the so-called Adamites, was sternly suppressed by Zizka. Shortly afterwards, a new crusade against the Hussites was undertaken. A large German army entered Bohemia, and in August 1421 laid siege to the town of Zatec, Zaz.
The crusaders hoped to be joined in Bohemia by King Sigismund, but that prince was detained in Hungary. After an unsuccessful attempt to storm Zatec, the crusaders retreated somewhat ingloriously on hearing that the Hussite troops were approaching. Sigismund only arrived in Bohemia at the end of the year 1421. He took possession of the town of Kutnachora, Hutenberg, but was decisively defeated by Žižka at Nemetsky Brot, Deutschbrot, on the sixth of January, Fourteen, Twenty Two. Bohemia was now again for a time free from foreign intervention, but internal discord again broke out, caused partly by theological strife, partly by the ambition of agitators. John of Jelivo was on the ninth of March, Fourteen, twenty two, arrested by the town council of Prague, and decapitated.
There were troubles at Tabor also, where a more advanced party opposed Žižko's authority. Bohemia obtained a temporary respite when, in Fourteen, twenty two, Prince Sigismund Koributovitch of Poland became for a short time ruler of the country. His authority was recognised by the Utrechtist nobles, The citizens of Prague and the more moderate Taborites, including Zizka. Korybutovitch, however, remained but a short time in Bohemia. After his departure, civil war broke out, the Taborites opposing in arms the more moderate Utrequists, who at this period are also called by the chroniclers the Praggers, as Prague was their principal stronghold. On the 27th of April, 1423, Zizka now again leading, The Taborites defeated at Horitz the Utrequist army under Czenec of Wartemberg.
Shortly afterwards, an armistice was concluded at Konopischt. Papal influence had meanwhile succeeded in calling forth a new crusade against Bohemia, but it resulted in complete failure. In spite of the endeavours of their rulers, the Slavs of Poland and Lithuania did not wish to attack the kindred Bohemians. The Germans were prevented by internal discord from taking joint action against the Hussites, and the King of Denmark, who had landed in Germany with a large force intending to take part in the crusade, soon returned to his own country. Free for a time from foreign aggression, the Hussites invaded Moravia, where a large part of the population favored their creed, but again paralyzed by dissensions soon returned to Bohemia.
The city of Königgaz, Kralovechradec, which had been under Utrecht's rule, espoused the doctrine of Tabor, and called Zizhka to its aid. After several military successes gained by Zizhka, in 1423 and in the following year, a treaty of peace between the Hussites was concluded on the 13th of September, 1424, at Leben, a village near Prague, now part of that city. In 1426 the Hussites were again attacked by foreign enemies. In June of that year, their forces, led by Prokop the Great, who took the command of the Taborites shortly after Žižka's death in October 1424, and Sigismund Koributovitch, who had returned to Bohemia, signally defeated the Germans at Auszik, Ustin at Labem. After this great victory, and another at Tachau in 1427, the Hussites repeatedly invaded Germany, though they made no attempt to occupy permanently any part of the country.
The almost uninterrupted series of victories of the Hussites now rendered vain all hope of subduing them by force of arms. Moreover, the conspicuously democratic character of the Hussite movement caused the German princes, who were afraid that such views might extend to their own countries, to desire peace. Many Hussites, particularly the Utrechtist clergy, were also in favour of peace. Negotiations for this purpose were to take place at the Ecumenical Council, which had been summoned to meet at Basel on the Third of March, Fourteen Thirty One. The Roman see reluctantly consented to the presence of heretics at this council, but indignantly rejected the suggestion of the Hussites that members of the Greek Church, and representatives of all Christian creeds, should also be present.
Before definitely giving its consent to peace negotiations, the Roman Church determined on making a last effort to reduce the Hussites to subjection. On the First of August, Fourteen Thirty One, a large army of Crusaders, under Frederick Margrave of Brandenburg, whom Cardinal Cesarini, accompanied as Papal Legate, crossed the Bohemian frontier. On the Fourteenth of August it reached the town of Domazlice, Taus. But on the arrival of the Hussite army under Prokop, the crusaders immediately took to flight, almost without offering resistance. On the Fifteenth of October, the members of the council, who had already assembled at Basel, issued a formal invitation to the Hussites to take part in its deliberations.
Prolonged negotiations ensued, but finally a Hussite embassy, led by Prokop and including John of Rokitsan, The Taborite bishop Nicholas of Pelhzimov, the English Hussite Peter Payne, and many others, arrived at Basel on the Fourth of January, Fourteen Thirty Three. It was found impossible to arrive at an agreement. Negotiations were not, however, broken off, and the change in the political situation of Bohemia finally resulted in a settlement. In Fourteen Thirty Four, war again broke out between the Utrechtists and the Taborites. On the Thirtieth of May of that year, The Taborite army, led by Prokop the Great and Prokop the Less, who both fell in the battle, were totally defeated and almost annihilated at Lipan.
The moderate party thus obtained the upper hand, and it formulated its demands in a document which was finally accepted by the Church of Rome in a slightly modified form, and which is known as the Compacts. The Compacts, mainly founded on the Articles of Prague, declare that, I. The Holy Sacrament is to be given freely in both kinds to all Christians in Bohemia and Moravia, and to those elsewhere who adhere to the faith of these two countries. Two. All mortal sins shall be punished and extirpated by those whose office it is to do so. Three. The Word of God is to be freely and truthfully preached by the priests of the Lord and by worthy deacons. Four. The priests in the time of the law of grace shall claim no ownership of lordly possessions.
On the Fifth of July, Fourteen Thirty Six, the compacts were formally accepted and signed at Iglau in Moravia by King Sigismund, by the Hussite delegates, and by the representatives of the Roman Church. The last named, however, refused to recognize as Archbishop of Prague, John of Rokizan, who had been elected to that dignity by the estates of Bohemia. The Utrecht creed, frequently varying in its details, continued to be that of the established Church of Bohemia till all the non-Roman religious services were prohibited shortly after the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620. The Taborite party never recovered from its defeat at Lipan, and after the town of Tabor had been captured by George of Poddebrat in 1452 Utrecht religion worship was established there.
The bohemian brethren, whose intellectual originator was Peter Helchitsky, but whose factual founders were brother Gregory, a nephew of Archbishop Rokitsan, and Michael, Curate of Zamburg, to a certain extent continued the Taborite traditions, and in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries included most of the strongest opponents of Rome in Bohemia. J. A. Komensky, Comenius, a member of the Brotherhood, claimed for the members of his church that they were the genuine inheritors of the doctrines of Hus. After the beginning of the German Reformation, many Utrequists adopted to a large extent the doctrines of Luther and Calvin, and in 1567 obtained the repeal of the Compacts, which no longer seemed sufficiently far-reaching.
From the end of the 16th century, the inheritors of the Hussite tradition in Bohemia were included in the more general name of Protestants, borne by the adherents of the Reformation.
-
9 09 - Hussites: John Huss, Bohemian Reformer and Martyr 22:15
John Huss by John Sutherland Black. Hus, John. Bohemian reformer and martyr was born at Husinetsch, a market-village at the foot of Böhmerwald, and not far from the Bavarian frontier, between 1373 and 1375, the exact date being uncertain. His parents appear to have been well-to-do checks of the peasant class. Of his early age nothing is recorded except that, notwithstanding the early loss of his father, he obtained a good elementary education, first at Husinetsch, and afterwards at the neighbouring town of Prahatich. At, or only a very little beyond the usual age, he entered the recently, in 1348, founded University of Prague, where he became Bachelor of Arts in 1393, Bachelor of Theology in 1394, and Master of Arts in 1396.
In 1398 he was chosen by the Bohemian nation of the university to an examinership for the bachelor's degree. In the same year he began to lecture also, and there is reason to believe that the philosophical writings of Wycliffe, with which he had been for some years acquainted, were his textbooks. In October, Fourteen O'one he was made Dean of the Philosophical Faculty, and for the half-yearly period from October, Fourteen O'two to April, Fourteen O'three he held the office of Rector of the University. In Fourteen O'two also he was made Rector or Curate, of the Bethlehem chapel, which had in 1391 been erected and endowed by some zealous citizens of Prague for the purpose of providing good popular preaching in the bohemian tongue.
This appointment had a deep influence on the already vigorous religious life of Hus himself, and one of the effects of the earnest and independent study of scripture into which it led him was a profound conviction of the great value, not only of the philosophical, but also of the theological writings of Wycliffe. This newly formed sympathy with the English reformer did not, in the first instance at least, involve Huss in any conscious opposition to the established doctrines of Catholicism, or in any direct conflict with the authorities of the Church, and for several years he continued to act in full accord with his archbishop, Zbignek or Zbinko of Hasenberg. Thus, in 1405, he, with two other masters, was commissioned to examine into certain reputed miracles at Wilsnack, near Wittenbach, which had caused that church to be made a resort of pilgrims from all parts of Europe.
The result of their report was that all pilgrimages thither from the province of Bohemia was prohibited by the archbishop on pain of excommunication, while Hus, with the full sanction of his superior, gave to the world his first published writing, entitled, The Omni Sanguine Christi Glorificato, in which he declaimed, in no measured terms, against forged miracles and ecclesiastical greed, urging Christians at the same time to desist from looking for sensible signs of Christ's presence, but rather to seek Him in His enduring Word. More than once also Hus, together with his friend Stanislaus of Znaim, was appointed to be Synod preacher, and in this capacity he delivered at the provincial councils of Bohemia many faithful admonitions.
As early as the 28th of May, it is true there had been held a university disputation about the new doctrines of Wycliffe, which had resulted in the condemnation of certain propositions presumed to be his, five years later, May 20th, 1408, this decision had been refined into a declaration that these, forty-five in number, were not to be taught in any heretical, erroneous or offensive sense. But it was only slowly that the growing sympathy of Hus with Wycliffe unfavourably affected his relations with his colleagues in the priesthood. In 1408, however, the clergy of the city and Arch-Episcopal Diocese of Prague laid before the Archbishop a formal complaint against Hus, arising out of strong expressions with regard to clerical abuses of which he had made use in his public discourses.
And the result was that, having been first deprived of his appointment as synodal preacher, he was, after a vain attempt to defend himself in writing, publicly forbidden the exercise of any priestly function throughout the diocese. Simultaneously with these proceedings in Bohemia, negotiations had been going on for the removal of the long-continued papal schism, and it had become apparent that a satisfactory solution could only be secured if— As seemed not impossible, the supporters of the rival popes, Benedict XIII and Gregory XII, could be induced, in view of the approaching Council of Pisa, to pledge themselves to a strict neutrality. With this end, King Wenceslaus of Bohemia had requested the cooperation of the archbishop and his clergy, and also the support of the university, in both instances unsuccessfully.
Although in the case of the latter the bohemian nation, with Hus at its head, had only been overborne by the votes of the Bavarians, Saxons, and Poles. There followed an expression of nationalist and particularist, as opposed to ultramontane and also to German feeling, which undoubtedly was of supreme importance for the whole of the subsequent career of Hus. In compliance with this feeling, a royal edict, on January Eighteenth, Fourteen O'Neill was issued, By which, in alleged conformity with Paris usage, and with the original charter of the university, the Bohemian nation received three votes, while only one was allotted to the other three nations combined, whereupon all the foreigners, to the number of several thousands, almost immediately withdrew from Prague, an occurrence which led to the formation, shortly afterwards, of the University of Leipzig.
It was a dangerous triumph for Hus, For his popularity at court and in the general community had been secured only at the price of clerical antipathy everywhere, and of much German ill-will. Among the first results of the changed order of things were, on the one hand, the election of Hus, October, Fourteenth, O'Neill, to be again rector of the university, but, on the other hand, the appointment by the archbishop of an inquisitor to inquire into charges of heretical teaching and inflammatory preaching brought against him. He had spoken disrespectfully of the Church, it was said, had even hinted that Antichrist might be found to be in Rome, had fomented in his preaching the quarrel between Bohemians and Germans, and had, notwithstanding all that had passed, continued to speak of Wycliffe as both a pious man and an Orthodox teacher.
The direct result of this investigation is not known, but it is impossible to disconnect from it the promulgation by Pope Alexander V on the 20th of December 1409, of a bull which ordered the abjuration of all Wycliffeite heresies and the surrender of all his books, while at the same time, a measure specifically levelled at the pulpit of Bethlehem Chapel, All preaching was prohibited, except in localities which had been, by long usage, set apart for that use. This decree, as soon as it was published in Prague, March 9th, 1410, led to much popular agitation, and provoked an appeal by Hus to the Pope's better-informed judgment. The archbishop, however, resolutely insisted on carrying out his instructions, and in the following July caused to be publicly burned in the country-yard of his own palace, upwards of two hundred volumes of the writings of Wycliffe, while he pronounced solemn sentences of excommunication against Huss and certain of his friends, who had in the meantime again protested and appealed to the new Pope, John XXIII.
Again the populace rose on behalf of their hero, who, in his turn, strong in the conscientious conviction that, In the things which pertain to salvation, God is to be obeyed rather than the man, continued uninterruptedly to preach in the Bethlehem Chapel, and in the University began publicly to defend the so-called heretical treatises of Wycliffe, while from king and queen, nobles and burghers, a petition was sent to Rome, praying that the condemnation and prohibition in the bull of Alexander V might be quashed. Negotiations were carried on for some months. But in vain. In March, Fourteen Eleven, the ban was a new pronounced upon Hus as a disobedient son of the church, while the magistrates and councillors of Prague, who had favoured him, were threatened with a similar penalty in ease of their giving him a contumacious support.
Ultimately, the whole city, which continued to harbour him, was laid under interdict. Yet he went on preaching, and masses were celebrated as usual. So that at the date of Archbishop Spinko's death in September 1411, it seemed as if the efforts of ecclesiastical authority had resulted in absolute failure. The struggle, however, entered on a new phase with the appearance at Prague in May 1412 of the papal emissary charged with the proclamation of the papal bulls, by which a religious war was decreed, against the excommunicated king Ladislaus of Naples. And indulgence was promised to all who should take part in it, on terms similar to those which had been enjoyed by the earlier crusaders to the Holy Land.
By his bold and thoroughgoing opposition to this mode of procedure against Ladislaus, and still more by his doctrine that indulgence could never be sold without simony, and could not be lawfully granted by the Church, except on condition of genuine contrition and repentance, Hus at last isolated himself not only from the arch-episcopal party under Albig of Unichov, but also from the theological faculty of the university, and especially from such men as Stanislaus of Znaim and Stephen Pallets, who until then had been his chief supporters. A popular demonstration, in which the papal bulls had been paraded through the streets with circumstances of peculiar ignominy, and finally burnt, led to intervention by Wenceslaus on behalf of public order.
Three young men, for having openly asserted the unlawfulness of the papal indulgence after silence had been enjoined, were sentenced to death. The excommunication against Hus was renewed, and the interdict again laid on all places which should give him shelter, a measure which now began to be more strictly regarded by the clergy, so that in the following December Hus had no alternative but to yield to the express wish of the king by temporarily withdrawing from Prague. A provincial synod, held at the instance of Benceslaus in February 1413, broke up without having reached any practical result, and the commission appointed shortly afterwards also failed to bring about a reconciliation between Hus and his adversaries.
The so-called heretic, meanwhile, spent his time partly at Kozichradek, some forty-five miles south of Prague, and partly at Kracovic, in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital, occasionally giving a course of open-air preaching, but finding his chief employment in maintaining that copious correspondence of which some precious fragments still are extant, and in the composition of the treatise de ecclesia, which subsequently furnished most of the material for the capital charges brought against him, and was formerly considered the most important of his works, Though it is mainly a transcript of Wycliffe's work of the same name. During the year 1413, the arrangements for the meeting of a general council at Constance were agreed upon between Sigismund and Pope John.
The objects originally contemplated had been the restoration of the unity of the Church and its reform in head and members, But so great had become the prominence of bohemian affairs, that to these also a first place in the programme of the approaching ecumenical assembly required to be assigned. And for their satisfactory settlement, the presence of Hus was necessary. His attendance was accordingly requested, and the invitation was willingly accepted, as giving him a long-wished-for opportunity, both of publicly vindicating himself from charges which he felt to be grievous, and of loyally making confession for Christ. He set out from Bohemia on the Fourteenth of October, Fourteen, Fourteen, Not, however, until he had carefully ordered all his private affairs, with a presentiment which he did not conceal, that in all probability he was going to his death.
The journey, which appears to have been undertaken with the usual passport, and under the protection of several powerful Bohemian friends, John of Clum, Wenceslaus of Duba, Henry of Clum, who accompanied him, was a very prosperous one, but at almost all the halting-places he was received with a considerable and enthusiastic sympathy which he had hardly expected to meet with anywhere in Germany. On the third of November he arrived at Constance. Shortly afterwards there was put into his hands the famous imperial safe-conduct, the promise of which had been one of his inducements to quit the comparative security he had enjoyed in Bohemia. This safe-conduct, which had been frequently printed, stated that Hus should, whatever judgment might be passed on him, be allowed to return freely to Bohemia.
This by no means provided for his immunity from punishment. If faith to him had not been broken, he would have been sent back to Bohemia to be punished by his sovereign, the king of Bohemia. The treachery of King Sigismund is undeniable, and was indeed admitted by the king himself. The safe-conduct was probably indeed given to him to entice Hus to constance. On the fourth of December, the Pope appointed a commission of three bishops to investigate the case against the heretic, and to procure witnesses. To the demand of Hus that he might be permitted to employ an agent in his defence, a favourable answer was at first given, but afterwards even this concession to the forms of justice was denied.
While the commission was engaged in the prosecution of its inquiries, the flight of Pope John, the 20th, took place on the 20th of March, an event which furnished a pretext for the removal of Hus from the Dominican convent to a more secure and more severe place of confinement under the charge of the Bishop of Constance at Gottlieben on the Rhine. On the Fourth of May, the temper of the Council on the Doctrinal Questions in Dispute was fully revealed in its unanimous condemnation of Wycliffe, especially of the so-called Forty-Five Articles, as erroneous, heretical, revolutionary. It was not, however, until the Fifth of June that the case of Hus came up for hearing. The meeting, which was an exceptionally full one, took place in the refectory of the Franciscan cloister.
Autograph copies of his work The Ecclesia, and of the controversial tracts which he had written against Pallets and Stanislausel's time having been acknowledged by him, the extracted propositions on which the prosecution based their charge of heresy were read. But as soon as the accused began to enter upon his defence, he was assailed by violent outcries, amidst which it was impossible for him to be heard, so that he was compelled to bring his speech to an abrupt close, which he did with the calm remark, "'In such a council as this I had expected to find more propriety, piety, and order.' It was found necessary to adjourn the sitting until the seventh of June, on which occasion the outward decencies were better observed, partly, no doubt, from the circumstance that Sigismund was present in person.
The propositions which had been extracted from the de ecclesia were again brought up, and the relations between Wycliffe and Hus were discussed, the object of the prosecution being to fasten upon the latter the charge of having entirely adopted the doctrinal system of the former, including especially a denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation. The accused repudiated the charge of having abandoned the Catholic doctrine while expressing hurty admiration and respect for the memory of Wycliffe. Being next asked to make an unqualified submission to the council, he expressed himself as unable to do so, while stating his willingness to amend his teachings wherever it had been shown to be false. With this the proceedings of the day were brought to a close.
On the eighth of June, the propositions extracted from the De ecclesia were again taken up with some fullness of detail. Some of these he repudiated as incorrectly given, others he defended. But when asked to make a general recantation, he steadfastly declined, on the ground that to do so would be a dishonest admission of previous guilt. Among the propositions he could heartily abjure was that relating to transubstantiation, Among those he felt constrained unflinchingly to maintain was one which had given great offence, to the effect that Christ, not Peter, is the head of the church to whom ultimate appeal must be made. The council, however, showed itself inaccessible to all his arguments and explanations, and its final resolution, as announced by Pierre Deilly, was threefold.
First, that Hus should humbly declare that he had erred in all the articles cited against him, Secondly, that he should promise on oath neither to hold nor teach them in the future. Thirdly, that he should publicly recant them. On his declining to make this submission, he was removed from the bar. Sigismund himself gave it as his opinion that it had been clearly proved by many witnesses that the accused had taught many pernicious heresies. And that even should he recant, he ought never to be allowed to preach or teach again, or to return to Bohemia, but that should he refuse recantation, there was no remedy but the stake. During the next four weeks, no effort was spared to shake the determination of Hus, but he steadfastly refused to swerve from the path which conscience had once made clear.
"'I write this,' says he in a letter to his friends at Prague, In prison and in chains, expecting tomorrow to receive sentence of death, full of hope in God that I shall not swerve from the truth, nor abjure errors imputed to me by false witnesses. The sentence he expected was pronounced on the sixth of July, in the presence of Sigismund, and a full sitting of counsel. Once and again he attempted to remonstrate, but in vain, and finally he betook himself to silent prayer. After he had undergone the ceremony of degradation, with all the childish formalities usual on such occasions, his soul was formally consigned by all those present to the devil, while he himself, with clasped hands and uplifted eyes, reverently committed it to Christ.
He was then handed over to the secular arm, and immediately led to the place of execution, the council meanwhile proceeding unconcernedly with the rest of its business for the day. Many incidents recorded in the histories make manifest the meekness, fortitude, and even cheerfulness with which he went to his death. After he had been tied to the stake, and the faggots had been piled, he was for the last time urged to recant, but his only reply was, God is my witness that I have never taught or preached that which false witnesses have testified against me. He knows that the great object of all my preaching and writing was to convert men from sin. In the truth of that gospel which hitherto I have written, taught, and preached, I now joyfully die.
The fire was then kindled, and his voice, as it audibly prayed in the words of the Kyrie eleison, was soon stifled in the smoke. When the flames had done their office, the ashes that were left, and even the soil on which they lay, were carefully removed and thrown into the Rhine. Not many words are needed to convey a tolerably adequate estimate of the character and work of the pale-thin man in mean attire, who, in sickness and poverty, thus completed the fourth and sixth year of a busy life at the stake. The value of Hus as a scholar was formerly underrated. The publication of his Super Quartam Sententiarum has proved that he was a man of profound learning. Yet his principal glory will always be founded on his spiritual teaching.
It might not be easy to formulate precisely the doctrines for which he died, and certainly some of them, as, for example, that regarding the Church, were such as many Protestants even would regard as unguarded and difficult to harmonize with the maintenance of external Church order. But his is undoubtedly the honour of having been the chief intermediary in handing on, from Wycliffe to Luther, the torch which kindled the reformation, and of having been one of the bravest of the martyrs who have died in the cause of honesty and freedom, of progress and of growth towards the light.
-
10 10 - Of Infant Baptism and Dipping 21:45
Of Infant Baptism and Dipping by John Owen. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The question is not whether professing believers, Jews or Gentiles, not baptized in their infancy, ought to be baptized, for this is by all confessed. Neither is it Whether in such persons the profession of saving faith and repentance ought not to go before baptism. This we plead for beyond what is the common practice of those who oppose us. Wherefore, testimonies produced out of authors, ancient or modern, to confirm these things which consist with the doctrine of infant baptism, are mere turgiversations that belong not to this cause at all, and so are all arguments produced unto that end out of the Scriptures.
The question is not whether all infants are to be baptized or not. For according to the will of God, some are not to be baptized, even such whose parents are strangers from the covenant, and hence it will follow that some are to be baptized, seeing an exception confirms both rule and right. The question is only concerning the children or infants' seed of professing believers who are themselves baptized. And first, they by whom this is denied, No instance can be given from the Old or New Testament since the days of Abraham. None from the approved practice of the primitive church, of any person or persons born of professing believing parents, who were themselves made partakers of this initial seal of the covenant, being then in infancy, and designed to be brought up in the knowledge of God, who were not made partakers with them of the same sign and seal of the covenant.
A spiritual privilege once granted by God unto any cannot be changed. For first, who shall disannul what God hath granted? What he hath Second. To say a privilege so granted may be revoked even by God Himself, without the substitution of a greater privilege and mercy in the room of it, is contrary to the goodness of God, His love and care unto His Church, contrary to His constant course of proceeding with it from the foundation of the world, wherein He went on in the enlargement and increase of its privileges until the coming of Christ. And to suppose it under the Gospel is contrary to all His promises, the honour of Christ, And a multitude of the express testimonies of Scripture. Thus was it with the privileges of the temple and the worship of it granted to the Jews.
They were not, they could not be taken away without express revocation and the substitution of a more glorious spiritual temple and worship in their room. But now the spiritual privileges of a right unto and a participation of the initial seal of the covenant was granted by God unto the infant seed of Abraham. Genesis 17.10. This grant, therefore, must stand firm forever, unless men can prove or produce, first, an express revocation of it by God Himself, which none can do either directly or indirectly in terms or any pretense of consequence. Secondly, an instance of a greater privilege or mercy, granted unto them in the room of it, which they do not once pretend unto, but leave the seat of believers, whilst in their infant state, in the same condition with those of pagans and infidels, Expressly contrary to God's covenant.
All this contest, therefore, is to deprive the children of believers of a privilege once granted to them by God, never revoked as to the substance of it, assigning nothing in its room, which is contrary to the goodness, love, and covenant of God, especially derogatory to the honor of Jesus Christ and the gospel. Fourthly, they that have the thing signified have right unto the sign of it, or those who are partakers of the grace of baptism. Have a right to the administration of it. So Acts 10.47. But the children of believers are all of them capable of the grace signified in baptism, and some of them are certainly partakers of it, namely, such as die in their infancy, which is all The Bible says, Second, all infants are born in a state of sin, wherein they are spiritually dead and under the curse.
Third, unless they are regenerate and born again, they must all perish inevitably. John 3.4 Their regeneration is the grace whereof baptism is a sign or token. Wherever this is, their baptism ought to be administered. Fifthly, God having appointed baptism as the sign and seal of regeneration, unto whom He denies it, He denies the grace signified by it. Why is it the will of God that unbelievers and impenitent sinners should not be baptized? It is because not granting them the grace, He will not grant them the sign. If, therefore, God denies the sign unto the infant seed of believers, it must be because He denies them the grace of it, and then all the children of believing parents dying in their infancy must, without hope, be eternally damned.
I do not say that all must be so who are not baptized, but all must be so whom God would not have baptized. But this is contrary to the goodness and law of God, the nature and promises of the covenant, the testimony of Christ reckoning them to the kingdom of God, the faith of godly parents, and the belief of the Church in all ages. It follows hence, unavoidably, that infants who die in their infancy have the grace of regeneration, and consequently, as good a right unto baptism as believers themselves. Sixthly, All children in their infancy are reckoned under the covenant of their parents by virtue of the law of their creation. For they are all made capable of eternal rewards and punishments, as hath been declared.
But in their own persons they are not capable of doing good or evil. It is therefore contrary to the justice of God and the law of the creation of humankind, wherein many die before they can discern between their right hand and their left, to deal with infants any otherwise but in and according to the covenant of their parents, and that he doth so. See Romans 5.14. Hence, I argue, those who by God's appointment and by virtue of the law of their creation are and must of necessity be included in the covenant of their parents Have the same right with them unto the privileges of that covenant, no express exception being put in against them. This right, it is in the power of none to deprive them of, unless they can change the law of their creation.
Thus it is 7. That is, the covenant of God made with Abraham. And he was the minister of the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made unto the fathers. Romans 15.8. This covenant was that he would be a God unto Abraham and his seed. Now, if this be not under the New Testament, then was not Christ a faithful messenger, nor did confirm the truth of God in his promises. This argument alone will bear the weight of the whole cause against all objections. For, one, children are still in the same covenant with their parents, or the truth of the promises of God to the fathers was not confirmed by Christ. Two, the right unto the covenant and interest in its promises, wherever it be, gives right unto the administration of its initial seal, i.e.
to baptism, as Peter expressly declares, Acts 2, 38 and 39, Wherefore, the rite of the infant seed of believers unto baptism, as the initial seal of the covenant, stands on the foundation of the faithfulness of Christ as the messenger of the covenant and minister of God for the confirmation of the truth of His promises. In brief, a participation of the seal of the covenant is a spiritual blessing. This the seed of believers was once solemnly invested in by God Himself. This privilege He hath nowhere revoked, though He hath changed the outward sign, nor hath He granted unto our children any privilege or mercy in lieu of it, now under the Gospel. When all grace and privileges are enlarged to the utmost, His covenant promises concerning them, which are multiplied, were confirmed by Christ as a true messenger and minister.
He gives the grace of baptism unto many of them. Especially those that die in their infancy, owns children to belong unto His kingdom, esteems them disciples, appoints households to be baptized without exception. And who shall now rise up and withhold water from them? This argument may be thus further cleared and improved. Christ is the messenger of the covenant , that is, the covenant of God with Abraham . For, one, that covenant was with and unto Christ mystical. Galatians 3.16. And he was the messenger of no covenant but that which was made with himself and his members. Two. He was sent, or was God's messenger, to perform and accomplish the covenant, and oath made with Abraham. Luke 1.72-73.
Three. The end of his message and of his coming was that those to whom he was sent might be blessed with faithful Abraham, or that the blessing of Abraham promised in the covenant might come upon them. Galatians 3.9-14. To deny this overthrows the whole relation between the Old Testament and the New, the veracity of God in His promises, and all the properties of the covenant of grace mentioned in 2 Samuel 23.5. It was not the covenant of works, neither originally nor essentially, nor the covenant in its legal administration, for He confirmed and sealed that covenant, whereof He was the messenger, but these He abolished. Let it be named what covenant he was the messenger of, if not of this. Occasional additions of temporal promises do not in the least alter the nature of the covenant.
Herein he was the minister of the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made unto the fathers. Romans 15.8. That is undeniably the covenant made with Abraham, enlarged and explained by following promises. This covenant was that God would be a God unto Abraham and his seed, which God himself explains to be his infant seed, Genesis 17, 12. That is, the infant seed of every one of his posterity who should lay hold on and avouch that covenant, as Abraham did, and not else. This the whole church did solemnly for themselves and their posterity, whereon the covenant was confirmed and sealed to them all, Exodus 24, 7 and 8. And everyone was bound to do the same thing in his own person, which, if he did not, he was to be cut off from the congregation, whereby he forfeited all privileges unto himself and his seed.
The covenant, therefore, was not granted in its administrations unto the carnal seed of Abraham, as such, but unto his covenanted seed, those who entered into it and professedly stood to its terms. And the promises made unto the fathers were that their infant seed, their buds and offspring, Should have an equal share in the covenant with them. They are the seed of the blessed of the Lord and their offspring with them. Not only themselves, who are the believing professing seed of those who were blessed of the Lord by a participation of the covenant, but their offspring also. Their buds, their little tender ones, are in the same covenant with them. To deny, therefore, that The children of believing professing parents who have avouched God's covenant as the Church of Israel did , have the same right and interest with their parents in the covenant is plainly to deny the fidelity of Christ in the discharge of His office.
It may be, it will be said, that although children have a right to the covenant, or do belong unto it, yet they have no right to the initial seal of it. This will not suffice, for, one, If they have any interest in it, it is either in its grace or in its administration. If they have the former, they have the latter also, as shall be proved at any time. If they have neither, they have no interest in it, then the truth of the promises of God made unto the fathers was not confirmed by Christ. Two. That unto whom the covenant or promise doth belong, to them belongs the administration of the initial seal of it, is expressly declared by the apostle, Acts 2, 38 and 39, be they who they will. Three. The truth of God's promises is not confirmed if the sign and seal of them is denied.
For that whereon they believed that God was a God unto their seed, as well as unto themselves, was this, that He granted the token of the covenant unto their seed, as well as unto themselves. If this be taken away by Christ, their faith is overthrown, and the promise itself is not confirmed but weakened. As to the virtue, it has to beget faith and obedience. Eighthly. Particular testimonies may be pleaded and vindicated, if need be, and the practice of the primitive Church. Of Dipping. Vapto, used in these scriptures, Luke 15.24, John 13.26, Revelation 19.13, we translate to dip. It is only to touch one part of the body. That of Revelation 19.13 is better rendered stained by sprinkling. In other authors, It is tingo, emergo, lavo, or abluo, but in no author ever signifies to dip, but only in order to washing, or as the means of washing.
It is nowhere used with respect to the ordinance of baptism. The Hebrew word taval is rendered by the 70, Genesis 37-31, by moluno, to stain by sprinkling or otherwise, mostly by vapto. 2 Kings 5, 14, they render it by vaptizo, and nowhere else. In verse 10, Elisha commands him to wash. Therefore, that in verse 14 is that he washed. Exodus 12.22 is to put the top of the hyssop into blood, to sprinkle it. 1 Samuel 14.27 to take a little honey with the top of a rod. In neither place can dipping or plunging be intended. Leviticus 4.6.17 9.9 and in other places it is only to touch the blood, so as to sprinkle it. Vaptizo signifies to wash, as instances out of all authors may be given, Sudus, Hezekius, Julius Pollux, Favaronius, and Eustatius.
It is first used in the scripture Mark 1.8, John 1.33, and to the same purpose Acts 1.5. In every place, it either signifies to pour, or the expression is equivocal. I baptize you with water, but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. Which is the accomplishment of that promise, that the Holy Ghost shall be poured on them. For the other places, Mark 7, 3, 4, Pinto and Vaptizo is plainly the same, both to wash. Luke 11, 38, the same with Mark 7, 3. No one instance can be given in the scripture wherein Vaptizo does necessarily signify either to dip or plunge. Baptizo may be considered either as to its original natural sense or as to its mystical sense in the ordinance. This distinction must be observed concerning many other words in the New Testament, as ecclesia, girontonia, and others, which have a peculiar sense in their mystical use.
In this sense, as it expresseth baptism, it denotes to wash only and not to dip at all, for so it is expounded.
1 Peter 3.21. And it signifies that communication of the Spirit which is expressed by pouring out and sprinkling. Ezekiel 36.25. And expresses the hour being washed in the blood of Christ. Titus 2.14. Hebrews 9.14.19.23. Wherefore, in this sense, as the word is applied unto the ordinance, the sense of dipping is utterly excluded. And though, as a mere external mode it may be used, provided the person dipped be naked, Yet, to urge it as necessary overthrows the nature of the sacrament. For the original and natural signification of it, it signifies to dip, to plunge, to dye, to wash, to cleanse. But, I say first, it does not signify properly to dip or plunge, for that in Greek is emvapto and emvaptizo.
Second, it nowhere signifies to dip, but as a mode of and in order to washing. Third, it signifies the dipping of a finger, Or, the least touch of the water and not plunging the hole. Fourth, it signifies to wash, also in all good authors. I have not all those quoted to the contrary. In the quotations of them whom I have, if it be intended that they say it signifies to dip and not to wash, or to dip only, there is neither truth nor honesty in them by whom they are quoted. Scapula is one, a common book, and he gives it the sense of lava, a bluer, to wash and wash away. Stephanus is another. And he expressly, in sundry places, assigns lavo and abluo to be also the sense of it. Aquinas is for dipping of children, provided it be done three times in honor of the Trinity, but he maintains pouring or sprinkling to be lawful also.
In Pseudas, The great treasury of the Greek tongue, it is rendered by Malefacio, Lavo, Abluo, Porgio, Mundo. The places in the other authors, being not quoted, I cannot give an account of what they say. I have searched some of them in every place wherein they mention baptism, and find no one word to the purpose. I must say, and will make it good, that no honest man who understands the Greek tongue can deny the word to signify to wash as well as to dip. It must not be denied, but that in the primitive times they did used to baptize both grown persons and children oftentimes by dipping, but they affirmed it necessary to dip them stark naked, and that three times, but not one ever denied pouring water to be lawful.
The Apostle, Romans 6, 3, 4, and 5, is dehorting from sin, Exhorting to holiness and new obedience, and gives this argument from the necessity of it and our ability for it, both taken from our initiation into the virtue of the death and life of Christ, expressed in our baptism, that by virtue of the death and burial of Christ we should be dead unto sin, sin being slain thereby, and by virtue of the resurrection of Christ we should be quickened to newness of life, as Peter declares, 1 Peter 3.21. Our being buried with Him, and our being planted together into the likeness of His death and likeness of His resurrection, is the same with our old man being crucified with Him, and the destroying of the body of sin, and our being raised from the dead with Him, which is all that is intended in the place.
There is not one word, nor one expression that mentions any resemblance between dipping under water And the death and burial of Christ, nor one word that mentions a resemblance between our rising out of the water and the resurrection of Christ. Our being buried with Him by baptism into death, verse 4, is our being planted together in the likeness of His death, verse 5. Our being planted together in the likeness of His death is not our being dipped under water, but the crucifying of the old man, verse 6. Our being raised up with Christ from the dead is not our rising from under the water, but our walking in newness of life, verse 4. By virtue of the resurrection of Christ. 1 Peter 3.21 That baptism is not a sign of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is clear from hence, because an instituted sign is a sign of gospel grace participated, or to be participated.
If dipping be a sign of the burial of Christ, it is not a sign of a gospel grace participated, for it may be where there is none, nor any exhibited. For the major, If all gospel ordinances are signs and expressions of the communication of the grace of Christ, then baptism is so, but this is the end of all gospel ordinances, or else they have some other end, or are vain and empty shows. The same individual sign cannot be instituted to signify things of several natures, but the outward burial of Christ and a participation of the virtue of Christ's death and burial are things of a diverse nature and therefore are not signified by one sign. That interpretation which would enervate the Apostles' argument and design, our comfort and duty, is not to be admitted.
But this interpretation, that baptism is mentioned here as the sign of Christ's burial, would enervate the Apostles' argument and design, our comfort and duty, and therefore it is not to be admitted. The minor is thus proved. The argument and design of the apostle, as was before declared, is to exhort and encourage unto mortification of sin and new obedience by virtue of power received from the death and life of Christ, whereof a pledge is given us in our baptism. But this is taken away by this interpretation, for we may be so buried with Christ and planted into the death of Christ by dipping, and yet have no power derived from Christ for the crucifying of sin and for the quickening of us to obedience.
End of Infant Baptism and Dipping by John Owen.
-
11 11 - Our Union And Its Defenders: An Oration, July 4th, 1862, Burlington, New Jersey 45:41
Our Union and its Defenders, an Oration, July 4th, 1862, Burlington, New Jersey, by J.
Howard Pugh. In the ways of Providence, there is always fitness in the smallest as in the greatest things. It is on the Fourth of July, in Midsummer, that we hold the anniversary festivals of American independence, and it is a beautiful ordering of the Providence that rules the seasons and the nations, that the time of these anniversaries is so well suited to the occasion. For it is fitting that in the midst of glorious summer days, when the earth lies richest in the sunlight, when the fields are golden with the harvest, when the air is fragrant with the scent of flowers and the new hay, when, in a word, the beauty and the bounty of nature unite to fill the heart with gladness and with gratitude, we should meet in kindred joy and thankfulness to celebrate our nation's natal day.
For sunshine is the symbol of And summer the symbol of peace. And the wondrous bounty of the season fitly typifies the fruits of that civil and religious liberty to establish which our fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Not that all these anniversaries have been, or will be, days of jubilee. Not that the chill and somberness of winter have not settled, will not settle, upon some. For many stormy years were passed before the hope that dawned on that July morning in Seventy Six became a full and crowned reality. And then you remember the day of the grand jubilee proper, the fiftieth anniversary of our independence, when both Jefferson, the author, and Adams, the most eloquent supporter of the Declaration, died.
And then—you remember today, one year ago, when the American Congress met in a beleaguered city within the sound of rebel cannon, with rebel ensigns flaunting almost in the face of the Capitol, met in solemn and determined council to devise ways and means to save the nation from destruction at the hands of its own misguided children. And then today—what shall I say of today? to-day, when sorrow sits brooding in a million homes, when the shadow of civil war still rests like a pall upon the nation, when, in the beautiful Virginia that Washington loved, his children are grappling in the struggle of death, Still, it is true that in the 80-odd years of our independence that have passed, there have been few of these anniversary days that have not wholly been days of Jubilee, and with the blessing of God a little longer on our Union armies, there will be fewer yet in the 80 years that are to come.
Few yet, I trust, in all the vast and pregnant future upon which the summer will not smile in poetic fitness, and which a grateful people will not greet with shouts of gladness and with songs of praise. We have all learned to revere the memory of the men who framed and adopted the Declaration of Independence. All men and all nations have learned to regard with admiration the energy, the courage, the fortitude, the exhaustless patience with which our fathers fought the battles of freedom, and inaugurated on this continent the great experiment of popular government. No one now dares to question the wisdom of their policy, the lofty purity of their lives and purposes, or the sublime quality of that heroic faith in the final triumph of their cause, which never failed them in the darkest hours of their long and bitter struggle to be free.
There were Tories then, all around them, as there are Tories now, in the war we are waging. But there is no one now, to vouchsafe a word of praise, on behalf of the Tories of the Revolution. They have sunk to that oblivion, or have earned that unenviable immortality, which belongs to the lot of all who fail their country in its hour of trial, and have neither voice nor sympathy but for its enemies. Only those who aided the colonies in their struggle with Britain, and remembered now with gratitude. And having been, for eighty years and more, a great and prosperous and happy people, we feel increasingly, as the years go by, that we cannot venerate the men too highly, through whose blood and tears and prayers and blessings we were made and kept a nation.
On a day like this, and in these hours of our history, facts like these have great significance. It is one of the uses of history to teach us what are the noblest uses of life, What deeds live longest in the memories of men? What motives give greatest strength and nobility to character? What fruition follows godlike sacrifices for truth and duty? What ideas and principles, embodied in life, lift men above the common level and crown them with immortal honors? It is one of the uses of a day like this to turn us back to higher sources of inspiration, that we may be the more manfully fitted for the duties of our time, that we may learn the cost of liberty, and the worth of patriotism, and the sacredness of principle, and the holiness of duty.
It is one of the uses of a day like this to teach us that our selfish aims and interests and motives are lives of luxury and frivolity, of leisure-loving and wealth-seeking. All sink to a level of lowest significance when contrasted with great heroic virtues such as bore our fathers through the storm and struggle of the revolution. And when these lessons have been learned by a people, And when, in the providence of God, the darkest hours of their history have come, when they are compelled themselves to strike for liberty or see it perish, when they have risen to that height of patriotism, that they exclaim with old John Adams in 76, that all that they have, and all that they are, and all that they hope for in this life, they are ready to stake upon the altar of their country.
When filled with such inspiration, they go Go forth from homes of happiness and peace to fields of carnage and of death. Then, above all, does it belong to the uses of a day like this to teach the mourning women of the land and the children that are fatherless that these dying and dead soldiers are one with the heroes of the revolution, that our country's history will embalm their names with equal honor and a common love, and that a grateful people throughout all the long The children in the long and coming years will keep their memory green. And this shall be my theme today. To consider whether the nation our fathers left us is drifting, to consider what we are fighting for, and to inquire whether the heroes of the struggle of to-day do not deserve equal honor with their illustrious sires.
Nor have I any doubt of the fitness of this theme for the time and the occasion. For our fathers fought to create a nation. We fight to have that nation live, to keep it one and indivisible, and vain were the Struggles of the Revolution, and vain the consecration of days like this to revolutionary memories, if they fail to bring out into highest prominence such deeds as those of the past and passing year. Our fathers fought to create a nation, and for 80 years there was no sublimer sight beneath the stars than the nation they created. During these 80 years this people grew from three to thirty millions, from thirteen to thirty-four states. They developed energies such as the world had seldom witnessed.
With marvelous rapidity they leveled forests and builded cities, they tunneled mountains and cultivated valleys, Vast as empires. They made their mountain streams turn mills and factories, and bear on their bosoms to the sea and to all the world the fruits of this industry and the products of the land. They dug out from the bosom of the rocky hills and from the dark subterranean recesses a wealth greater than the Indies, and made the wilderness above them to bud and blossom as the rose. They grew to be a thinking, toiling, tireless people, and turning from their material successes, they began to manifest progress and proficiency in literature, in science, and in art. And all along they conducted a system of government which had no parallel in history, the success of which was distrusted by many of our early statesmen, and by all the world beside.
And high above all the evidence of their wealth and power, Above all the beauties and beneficence of their soil and clime, rose the crowning fact that these teeming, toiling millions were the freest people upon earth, that they enjoyed, in larger measure than the world had ever known, the privileges and prerogatives that belonged to manhood, and that they held inviolably sacred, as their fathers before them, their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I know to what criticism these remarks are open. I know somewhat of the faults and follies of this age and nation. I know how prone we are upon days like this to forget our mistakes, our follies, and our crimes, and to indulge in strains of national eulogy, and I confess these strains I have rarely relished.
I know, too, how common is the autocratic talk that the equal rights, the enlarged liberties, which our institutions secure to the citizen, tend only to license in thought and speech, to fanaticism, to lawlessness, to Disrespective authority to no government. And yet I know that it has not been the bestowment of privileges upon the many, but the despotic domination of the irresponsible few that has always cursed humanity. And when I remember how seldom in all the world the fundamental rights of man have been ever recognized, how throughout all time the millions have been toiling, suffering, dying, to keep a few priests in power, or a few tyrants on their thrones, how the few, whom the accidents of birth or fortune have clothed with titles and dignities and powers, fill all the spaces of history, while the patient masses figure only as their suppliants and tools.
Then I am glad to turn to our eighty years of history, and through all its mistakes and blemishes and inconsistencies, to recognize the great central fact that has struggled upon this continent into endless life, that the rights of men are equal, that men have higher uses than to become appendages of nobility or parasites of royalty, that birds Earth and blood are nothing, that names and titles are nothing, that all the outward emblems of wealth and greatness are nothing, compared with the rights which all men possess in common, compared with the qualities with which God may, and often does, endow the humblest born of earth. And this nation, which our fathers founded, and which thus expanded into eighty years of such vigorous life, how fares it now?
It is racked and rent with civil war. In little more than a year, a hundred new battlefields have been added to its history. Whole states are given up to desolation. The land is filled with mourners. Hearts are broken today that a year ago beat high with hope and love and happiness. Childhood and womanhood and tottering age Its props, all gone, are mingling their tears and prayers to-day in the bitterness of a sorrow that will never end on earth. I believe that the war now waged by our northern armies is eminently just and righteous, or the world has never seen one. I believe that there never has been a time when the government could have avoided the conflict without unutterable dishonor, and that it will inherit and deserve the contempt of humanity if it fail to continue the struggle with the utmost vigor until every atom of this rebellion is crushed into annihilation.
Whether this be the proper view to take of the war or not, is a question of momentous import. For if not, how can we find comfort for the mourners who have sent forth the idols of their households to die in its cause? Or how can we fitly rebuke those who would deepen these sorrows and dampen all patriotic ardor by their open sympathy with our enemies in arms? Therefore, does it become us to ask and answer the question, what are we fighting for? What are we not fighting for is apparent enough. We are not fighting for the abolition of slavery. We are not fighting, as Lord John Russell says, for empire. We are not fighting from love of power, from vindictiveness or hate. We are fighting simply for our own.
We are fighting to establish, on foundations eternal as are mountains, one grand, stupendous geographical fact, that the country and people lying between the St. Johns and the Rio Grande, between the Tortugas Islands and Vancouver Land, compose one nation and are called the United States of America. In a public address I delivered in this city some years ago occurred these words. Viz. All over the land the politicians are echoing the cry of disunion, but the people do not hear it, or do not heed it. They are busy at their workshops, on their farms, doing daily duty, earning daily bread, and they do not hear it. But when they do, When the talk of politicians begins to shape itself to deeds, they will smother the life out of this disunion cry.
I believed then, as I believe now, and as events have proved, if rightly interpreted, that the common sense of a common people, of the American masses, had long ago settled the true value of the American Union. The intuitions of a people are better than their logic. Their profoundest convictions make the least noise. Not by argument, not by the talk of politicians, nor the expositions of statesmen, but by the benefits and blessings that flow in upon them through the passing years, do men learn to measure best the value of their institutions. The greatest truths sink into the heart silently, like the dews of heaven. As the influences of home and of Christian example mold and fix the character, so do the influences of good government and beneficent institutions settle the convictions of a people unconsciously, noiselessly, but most profoundly.
And it is often true that nothing but some great world upheaval can arouse men to a consciousness of their slumbering powers, their sublime beliefs and duties and perils. So still and strong and deep was the faith of the American people in the perpetuity and inestimable worth of the American Union that they could not believe it was in danger. But when they saw the danger, when they knew that rebel cannon were bombarding Sumter, and that the United States flag had been shot from the walls of a United States fort, then they rose. And when Banks was retreating a month ago, they rose again. And all that they have done, all the treasure they have poured out, all the men they have sent to battle, all the sacrifices they have made, all the evidences they have given of an undying love of country, are nothing, nothing compared with what they will yet do before they will let this union perish.
Before the bombardment of Sumter, party prejudice and strife were strong as ever. Men differed in opinion, and differed with great bitterness about all the measures of government. The cabinet of Buchanan became disintegrated with conflicting views of his policy. This policy was praised by many, blamed by more. Equal differences of opinion met the policy of the new president. Many thought his course too timid and temporizing. Many thought it too aggressive and bold, and feared, to use their execrable language, that it would exasperate the South. But when the bombardment came, then all men saw at a glance that a government that could not feed its own starving garrisons, that could not command its own forts, was no government at all.
They saw at once that the struggle was one of life and death, and then the nation rose, and then the war began. The latent patriotism of the people, that had been growing and intensifying for three quarters of a century, burst forth at last like a flame, and from that day to this, the only question before us, the question to be decided by cannon and bullets and bayonets, has been one of the existence of the American Union. And whenever men now talk about conciliation and compromise and peace, while five hundred thousand rebels are in arms, they are men of that doubtful patriotism which would not shrink to see the great American Union blotted from the list of nations. I have my own opinions about the deep underlying causes that have produced this war, and you have yours, but we will not discuss them today.
They would revive old party issues. They would jar upon the proprieties of this occasion. They would detract from that unanimity of thought and action which should characterize all true patriots in the hour of a nation's agony. The two facts that need to be remembered are that the South aims to destroy the Union. We aim only to preserve it, and it is not a question of opinion, it is not a question of party, it is simply a question of patriotism, upon which side you are. There is no middle ground to stand upon. A man must be in favor of one thing or the other, either the prosecution of the war, on our behalf, to a triumphant end, or the destruction of the government. This is so clear that it were folly to reiterate it, did not some men claim to be neutral.
Judge Douglas spoke words of truth that will live as long as his memory, when he said, "'There can be but two classes in this contest, patriots and traitors.'" For the South is not fighting for concessions and compromises, and never has been. It is fighting to establish a new government and to break up the old. It wants no peace but upon this basis. And this basis is one which, by the help of God, the American people will never grant. And why? First, because they have learned to love their country as it is. Patriotism is among the grandest virtues. It belongs to the highest elements of character. It gives more luster to historic names than almost any other single quality. It intensifies life and makes even death glorious and shadowless.
But it implies objects. And a country to excite the loftiest patriotism is not made in a day, scarce in a century. It must have a history. In that history must be found the record of immortal names, immortal deeds, and a career illustrating and exalting immortal principles. And such a country is ours, and it must include the whole country, or patriotism, as we have learned it, is impossible. Break up our union, and you mar all our history. You write all backward the lesson of our country's glory that we have learned from earliest childhood. You take from us the only object we had learned to regard with patriotic fervor. It is like taking from one's home the only being that gives it life and loveliness.
It is like blotting the sun from the heavens. It is taking from us at a single stroke what men in all ages of the world have fought for with the most undaunted courage, what no nation on the globe today, civilized or not, would ever think of yielding without first No. We are satisfied with the Union that our fathers founded. We are satisfied with the eighty years' experience by which it has been tested. We are satisfied with the place it has taken among the nations. We want no new experiments in government. Especially do we want none initiated upon the fragments of our own. We know that to the Union we owe all our progress and our power. All that we have, all that we are, all that we can hope to be.
We know that it is the flag of our union that is recognized on every sea and honored throughout the world. We know that our little, petty, pompous states sink into insignificance when we leave their soil, and that it is the name of an American citizen that we prize at home and that gives us character abroad. It is not the rocky hills and stone-clad valleys of New England, nor the rich soil and undulating surface of the Middle States, with their great wealth-bearing mountain ranges, nor the fertile prairies of the West, nor the broad savannas of the South. It is no one of these, but all in one that we have learned to call our country. It is not Adams and Hamilton and Harrison and Webster alone, but Washington and Henry and Jackson and Clay that we have learned to venerate among our heroes and statesmen.
It is not the battlefields of New England and the Middle States alone, but of Virginia and the Carolinas that make up the glory of our nationality. It is impossible to blot these names from our history. It is impossible to erase these memories from our hearts. And it is impossible to educate a people with such an ancestry in such annals, and have them enjoy the blessings of such a government for the larger part of a hundred years, and then undertake to break up their government, either by domestic or by foreign foes, without creating a convulsion that will shake the world. There is another reason reason why we will not accept the destructive alternative demanded by the South. It is because we believe that by dismembering the Union and establishing two or more separate governments upon its ruins, there can be no such thing as permanent peace.
We believe that if you cut the Mississippi in two by the border-line of an alien nation, and deny the boundless wealth of the Mississippi Valley all access to the ocean, except under the frowning fortresses of a foreign power, you cannot expect to have peace. We believe that to keep our rival systems of tariff and revenue from clashing along a line extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific without natural defenses through vast regions of wild and thinly populated territory is an impossibility. And then there must be settled all the preliminaries of a dissolution, questions of boundary, questions of ownership of forts and public property, questions of division of the national debt and of individual obligation, questions of river and harbor navigation.
And then would arise, under forms vastly more difficult of adjustment, all the old political questions that have alienated the sections. And then would come treaties and We had intrigues with foreign powers, and alliances entangling us with all the petty quarrels of Europe, and keeping us ever implacable enemies, thus rendering us impotent and without influence among nations. And this is the future to which we are invited. Now we have one cause of war. Attempt to negotiate a dissolution of the Union, and we shall have fifty. And the number would be all the more by reason of the parties with whom we should have to negotiate. For I maintain that a set of men, who, like the leaders of this rebellion, would destroy a government like ours, upon pretext such as theirs, could not be negotiated with without war.
And until their pride is humbled, their power broken, until they have been made to endure somewhat of the bitterness of that suffering they pour out so overwhelmingly upon others, until their arrogance and haughtiness are utterly abased in exile or on the scaffold, there can be no peace upon this continent. There is still another reason why we will not consent to the disruption of the Union. Because the probability is too great that it would end there, And in all the world, and for a thousand years, the experiment of popular government. Already the South disdains the rule of the people. In a population of ten millions, they have but three hundred thousand slaveholders. Yet almost every man in power is a slaveholder.
Hence, government with them is already in the hands of a class. And then, the tone of their press, and the speeches of their statesmen have aimed for years to degrade labor, have betrayed a growing dislike for the equality of rights demanded by our institutions, and have been And then the doctrine of secession, which thirty years ago we had supposed was crushed forever under the gigantic tread of Webster's logic and the strokes of Jackson's iron will, this principle of disintegration upon which they would base their government would sooner or later drive them into despotism. And this principle would not be without effect upon the North, for it has many advocates here already. Men are as apt in learning lessons of evil as of good.
One successful rebellion would become the parent of others. The theory of our government presupposes the existence of various and diverse local interests to be controlled by local governments. It is impossible for these interests not to be sometimes subordinated to the general welfare. Established two confederacies and the constant temptation would be held out to states with similar local interests, fretting under imaginary grievances or maddened by party spirit, to strike off from the parent state on the one hand and form alliances with similarly disaffected portions on the other. The interests of the western and southwestern states are quite as closely connected by the waters of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri as the interests of either are with the states upon the Atlantic seaboard, and would be quite as likely to be formed, ultimately, into a third and independent government as to remain united with the old.
Oregon and California, washed by the waves of another ocean and thousands of miles from the central government, would be especially difficult to hold by the north. And the worst future of any such subdivisions would be the necessity that must arise for large and ever-increasing military establishments, both of the Army and Navy. A frequently recurring or a prolonged state of war not only eats up the substance and palsies the industry of a people, but it is incompatible with the enlarged liberties we claim for the citizen. The qualities of mind and heart which make the greatest generals are not commonly those which inculcate the highest regard for individual rights. The glare and glitter of military reputation cannot outshine in all the avenues to power the less ostentatious merits of the statesman and scholar without imperiling free institutions.
We risk little from these causes now. No American general now, were he to manifest within a year more than the genius of the first Napoleon, could undertake to establish a dictatorship over the American people without immediately falling from the pedestal of power. For we have not forgotten our earliest teachings. We have not forgotten that the name of Washington belongs to our history. We have been educated in the meaning of his great and glorious life, and no man now can command any He has a large influence in American affairs, who is not as ready to lay down power as to take it up. But let this people learn to lean, for half a century, upon the military arm, place them in a position in which questions must frequently arise to be settled only by the sword, agitate the peaceful current of their lives with ever-recurring waves of war, Allow their individuality, their liberty of thought and speech, to become absorbed, year after year, in that oneness of purpose, that subordination to another's will, which military law requires, and they will become, as ready as others have before them, to seek rest, stability, and peace, at the expense of liberty and equality, under the rigor of despotic rule.
There is one thought I would refer to in considering these causes which keep the North so true to the Union. It is this. These same causes must operate powerfully in hastening the return of the South to her allegiance, when once her military power is broken. I speak now upon the supposition that her military power can be broken. This I have never doubted, and never expect to. If we crush her political and military leaders, stop for a season the systematic lying by which she has been deluded, give her time to cool and consider, she will cheerfully return to her allegiance. If her territory were separated from ours by great natural barriers, if she were a distinct and oppressed nationality, like Poland or Hungary or Italy or Ireland, if her people were of a different race, spoke a different language, professed a different religion, and were fighting in a righteous or at least a reasonable cause, then we might doubt the possibility of the restoration of good feeling.
There is no doubt but that the South is carrying on the war with great unanimity, for war creates its own arguments. But there is no reason to believe that the masses of the South have ever been convinced that their leaders were right in beginning the war, or that the breaking up of the Union could ever ultimate in anything but disaster to themselves and their posterity. There is great reason to believe that the arch-leaders themselves did not contemplate at the outset the destruction of this government with a view of establishing two or more independent ones as a final result. They wanted a new constitution. They could not change the old one in a constitutional way. They chose to make a new one in an unconstitutional way.
They expected the border states would immediately come under it. They expected soon to absorb the middle states and the lower tier of the northwestern states, and finally all the rest, when these had become sufficiently humbled. They expected to avoid civil war. They thought the North quite too craven and mercenary for that, and as a chief means of success in accomplishing these ends, they counted upon the aid of a powerful party in the North. This aid they received, backed by such journals as the New York Herald, and scores of others, All advocating the adoption of the Montgomery Constitution until the bombardment of Fort Sumter awoke the loyalty of the northern masses and the majesty of the United States government.
There is every reason to believe that if the question of disunion had been fairly submitted to the people of the South before the breaking out of the war, they would have decided overwhelmingly against it. The whole region had been so long saturated and cursed with the political heresies of Calhoun that their regard for state rights, their feeling of state pride, had diminished greatly that sentiment of nationality so characteristic of the North. But every other reason I have given to-day in favor of the value of this union, every other reason that can be given applies with equal force to the South as to the North. They can no more afford to do without the union than we can. Neither can do without it, and ever prosper.
And once clear away the bitterness of passion, the pride, the rancor, and the unreasonableness that belong to a state of actual conflict, and the masses of the South will admit the fact. And when men say the Union is already dissolved because the sections are at war, they exhibit little knowledge of human nature or of human history. Have they forgotten that almost every country on the globe has had its great rebellion, has been scourged with civil war? Do they believe that the animosities now existing between the North and South are any more bitter, or likely to prove any more lasting, than those engendered by the civil wars of England, or of France, or of Spain? I know these animosities will live long enough Too long.
This generation will not survive them. Too much anguish and passion and venom for that. But history will reproduce itself here as elsewhere, and when we remember the past, and how soothing are the influences of trade and commerce, how mutually dependent are the products and the industries of the sections, How we are bound together by railroads and telegraphs and watercourses and ties of consanguinity. There is every reason to believe that the rebellion conquered, the return of good feeling would be more speedy and more complete than has usually followed the scourge of civil war. Thus, fellow citizens, have I attempted to show you today what they fight for who fight for the Union, what those forces are that nerve the arms and inspire the souls of the people.
First, the sentiment of nationality, a love of country not bounded by state lines, but including the whole country with its historic names and memories. Second, a belief that no permanent peace could follow a Dissolution of the Union, and that the wars it would produce would prove vastly more desolating and unending than the one now waging. And third, the probability, the almost certainty, that such dissolution would finally result in the entire abandonment of the democratic principle in government. I am aware that in enlarging upon these points I have told you nothing new. I have perhaps told you little from which you would dissent. Times like these make all men thinkers, and on all cardinal points all patriots think alike.
We are crowding years into days. Instinctively we recognize our duties. We learn not now our lessons of highest wisdom from one another. Events, God's teachers and inspirers are bringing to the surface all our nobler qualities. The objects we had set before us as being worthy the struggle of a life have all sunk to a lower level, and higher objects have risen. Demanding self-abandonment, self-sacrifice, and absorbing the whole soul In love of country, in care for its honor, in sorrow for its misfortunes, in joy for its triumphs, in devotion to its service, even unto death. The prosecution of this war is not with us a matter of choice. We do not regard it as a matter about which we have any right to hesitate or consult our own wishes or interests.
It comes to us in the sphere of our highest duties. It prompts us to ask, not so much what we owe ourselves, as what we owe posterity. And we know we shall deserve the just condemnation of history, and the eternal execration of our children, if we do not sacrifice every selfish aim, every social comfort, every domestic tie, every interest of property or life, rather than have this union divided. Beside this question of union, the question of slavery, deemed so important by many, sinks out of sight. Not but that the latter has important bearings on the war, Both in the relation of cause and cure. But the great issue before us is not one of the good or ill of four millions of blacks, but of thirty millions of whites.
The majestic duty of the hour is to save this union for ourselves, for our children, and the children of those who would destroy it, for the unborn millions of the North and South. The East and the West. Let us, then, honor the dead who die in this cause, and the living mothers who bore them. Let us honor the heroes who survived the conflict. Let their children be taught to prize the names they inherit, and let it be the joy of the living and the solace of those who mourn the dead, that the men whose names are enrolled on the side of the government in the battles of 61 and 62 will live forever in the hearts of their countrymen. side by side with the soldiers of our great Washington. And, moreover, if this war be as righteous as we believe it, it becomes us to counteract, by word and deed, those influences so widespread, so noxious, and withal so active in diffusing a contrary belief.
For there are some men in all sections of the north, some even in the halls of Congress, some men and some women in every community, who stigmatize this war on our behalf as wicked and inhuman. And it would be a shame upon our civilization, a reproach upon our courage, our intelligence, and our patriotism, and the moral tone of our communities, if we did not meet these calumnies with fitting rebuke, and if we did not our utmost to prevent a shade of doubt or suspicion as to the righteous nature of this war from polluting our northern air, and from invading those northern homes made desolate by the new of battle and of loved ones dying amid its terrors. This is no time for halfway measures, or halfway men.
This is no time for the deepest convictions of the heart to falter upon the lips from motives of mere worldly prudence. Things must be called by their right names. Deeds must be approved or emphatically condemned. Men must be what they seem. For or against the government, they must take their stand. Justice and judgment and mercy demand that there be no trifling, no concealment, no equivocation now. Wars have been, may be again, about which we can differ, but this is not one of them. The President of the United States is exerting all his powers, as it is his duty to do, to save the government from destruction. Greater responsibility never rested upon a ruler, and he has done his duty eminently well.
He has a right to the sympathy and active aid of every citizen. In some respects he may have overstepped his constitutional powers. Men, if true and loyal, may differ from him as to his policy and prerogatives, and their opinions be entitled to respect, but they should praise vastly more than blame. But men who condemn him, yet condemn not the rebellion he is trying to crush, are not entitled to respect. The president, his advisors, and agents may err. They are but human. But their object is to save the Constitution and Union. The object of the South is the destruction of both, and wherever and whenever you find men who denounce the former fiercely and the latter faintly, those eyes are so microscopic that they can discover, in the records of Congress and the departments, flaws in legislation and frauds in contracts, and yet cannot see the tremendous fraud and crime.
of this rebellion. Whenever you find men who cry, Peace, Peace, and who mean by peace, and can't mean otherwise, the independence of the South, the submission of the North, the dissolution of the Union, and the death of Republican liberty, then you have found the deadliest foes your country has in these dark and trying hours. We shall succeed in crushing this rebellion? True. Tidings of disaster float upon the air. God pity the dying soldier and the desolate homes throughout the land. If we have lost a great battle, the war is just begun. We may lose one battle, we may lose fifty, but we will gain more than we lose, and will conquer in the end. We have two men to their one. We have ten times their wealth, We hold the sea, we have infinite resources in reserve upon land, we have a cause that will keep us ever hopeful and defiant, and in the end we must conquer.
But we have lessons of wisdom yet to learn, and we must learn some from our enemies. Every dollar of property among them, owned by us, they confiscate and use against us in war. Every dollar of debt, owed by their citizens to ours, they claim as the property of their government. They tolerate no enemies among them. Men who do not heartily support them, they drive out of their country or into the ranks of their armies. We have not dared to attack them with their own weapons. They never can be conquered till we do. And it may be true that we can only learn wisdom in the severe school of defeat and disaster. But learn it we must and will, and we will teach them and teach the world, at whatever sacrifice of means and life, that Republican liberty in America was not born to die.
We know, and we must teach them, that our lifelong enthusiasm for popular government, our lifelong hope for its spread throughout the world, that all the memories that cluster round this sacred day, hallowing our past and brightening our future, are all involved in— are impossible without the perpetuity of this union. We know that our lives are worth nothing, that all our aims and achievements are valueless, that we can claim no high standard for conduct or character, that we can find no link to bind us to the immortal men who signed that declaration, if we are to leave behind us, as a heritage for our children, a union divided, discordant, belligerent, Instead of liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.
End of Our Union and its Defenders, an Oration, July 4th, 1862, Burlington, New Jersey, by J. Howard Pugh.
-
12 12 - Pompeian Surgery and Surgical Instruments 38:32
Pompeian Surgery and Surgical Instruments by Nicholas Sen. Pompeian Surgery and Surgical Instruments by Nicholas Sen, M.D.
A recent visit to the ruins of Pompeii and the Naples Museum has enabled me to make a careful examination of the ruined homes and corroded implements of the Pompeian surgeons. A visit of this kind, with its wonderful revelations at every step, is a memorable event in the life of every student of ancient surgery who has enjoyed such an opportunity. Nearly two thousand years have elapsed since the last surgeons of that ill-fated city practiced their art. They perished or fled during that fearful eruption of Vesuvius that wiped out of existence so suddenly the two neighboring cities, Pompeii and Herculaneum, burying the former under a bed of burning ashes and incorporating the latter in a mass of lava.
It is interesting to posterity that the city of Pompeii, with all its antique treasures, has been preserved for centuries under this removable mantle of the product of volcanic action, which has made it possible for the interested archaeologists of the present century to unveil to us the works of art and science of two thousand years ago. A walk through the streets of the recently uncovered city of Pompeii brings vividly to the mind of the visitor the life, works, virtues, and vices of its former inhabitants. The old aqueduct that supplied the city with pure water from the mountains is well preserved and remains as one of the marvels of engineering of that time. The pavements of the streets can compare favorably with those of our day.
The bare walls of public and private buildings testify to the unrivalled perfection masonry had attained at that day. The crude stone mills operated by human power furnished the city with flour, which in the adjacent bakery was converted into bread. The enormous wine jugs, so numerous in places where wine was sold and drunk, remain as lasting mementos that the Pompeians were by no means prohibitionists. The numerous houses of prostitution, both public and private, remain as silent witnesses of a vice which appeared to have been unusually prevalent at that time. The Capacious Forum, Amphitheatre, Comic and tragic theatres that remain in a wonderful state of preservation show that the people of that day, male and female, old and young, enjoyed the glittering stage and the bloody contests of the gladiators.
The public bathhouse is a marvel of its kind, and it is doubtful if in its artistic design and luxury it could be duplicated today. The private dwellings are all constructed on the same plan, masterpieces of comfort and sanitary construction. The numerous fountains furnished pure water for beast and man. The temple of Aesculapius is one of the prominent landmarks of the former city. Unfortunately, time and the elements have dealt gently with its precious contents. In the center of the capacious ante-room stands the altar of pure marble, beautifully carved, at which the priests of old worshipped in the interests of suffering humanity. It is here where the sick, the maimed, and the injured sought relief.
As I stood behind the altar where so many of the disciples of Aesculapius had stood and performed their sacred functions, It seemed to me that I could hear the pitiable appeals of the suffering Pompeians and the sound advice and sweet words of consolation of the ministering priest. With the temple of Aesculapius will always be associated the early history of medicine and the struggle between disease and its successful treatment. A walk through the narrow, stone-paved streets of the uncovered part of the ruins of Pompeii is necessarily attended with serious thoughts of the past and present. The wider streets show deep grooves made by the chariot wheels, while the narrower streets were reserved for pedestrians.
The one-story buildings, both public and private, show a singular uniformity in their construction, Evidence that the Pompeian architects and builders had in view more the comfort and health of their occupants than a desire to exhibit their talent. The many shops in the principal street were the homes and business places of merchants who supplied the citizens with the luxuries and necessities of life. A large building on the corner of two streets served as a drugstore, where crude drugs were dealt out to those in need of remedial agents. The proprietor of this primitive pharmacy, living, as he did, next door to a public house of prostitution, in order to protect himself and family against intrusion of an undesirable nature, Found it necessary to place above the entrance a sign to indicate to the prospective customer the legitimate character of his business, and to direct him properly if he was in search of pleasure.
Before giving a description of the surgical instruments exhumed from the ruins of Pompeii, it is necessary to say something of the city of Pompeii and its destruction. The temple in the Leper Forum at Pompeii Generally called the Temple of Hercules, is the oldest extant ruin in the city, and it is safe to say that it is of the same period with the Poestum temples, as it corresponds exactly with them in architecture. Hence, we may safely date it at 650 BC, And the history of Pompeii is thus narrowed between that date and 79 AD, when we know from reliable sources that the final destruction of the city took place. Our inquiry thus extends over a space of about 700 years. For the first 300 we are in the regions of conjecture.
For the last 400 we are in the realm of authenticated history. When the Greek temple was built at Pompeii, the place was in the hands of the Oskans, a pastoral tribe who came down the plains in the winter and fed their flocks in the hills in the summer. The Oskans were driven out of Campania in 420 BC by the Semnites, a tribe of hardy mountaineers, who attained the height of their power about 350 BC and built a great part of Pompeii. The Semnites practically built the city, and wherever we find houses built of large blocks of stone, neatly joined together without mortar, we may safely predict their Semnite origin. Their work was all in the Doric style, and it was the Romans who covered it with stucco, transformed it into the Ionic style, and decorated it with tracery and paintings.
The Romans occupied Campania in 88 BC, and thereafter Pompeii takes its place in Roman history and is frequently mentioned by Seneca, Pliny, and other contemporary writers. Toward the close of Nero's reign, that is to say in the year 63 AD, the whole region was visited by severe earthquakes, which made such havoc that the cities were deserted for several years. The rebuilding of Pompeii appears to have been begun about 69 AD, ten years before its final destruction. which took place on the 23rd of November, 79 AD, and appears to have commenced in the afternoon. It is well to observe that although Herculaneum and Pompeii were destroyed by the same eruption, they were destroyed in quite different ways.
The former was filled up by a flow of warm, muddy water, which filled it with a soft paste. And subsequent eruptions have covered it with molten lava no less than eleven times, rendering excavation exceedingly difficult and costly. Pompeii, on the other hand, was covered with loose ashes and pumice stone, which were ejected from the volcano to a considerable height and blown into the city by the violent northwesterly gale, which Pliny tells us was raging at the time. In short, Pompeii can be excavated with a trowel, but it takes a chisel to make an impression on Herculaneum. Lord Lytton has given us, in his fantastic novel, The Last Days of Pompeii, a graphic and what must be considered as a correct description of the destruction of Pompeii.
He connects the beginning of the terrible catastrophe with a public play in which Arbaces, the Egyptian, was to be turned over to the lion by the angry assembled multitude. The helpless Egyptian heard the shouting of the bloodthirsty audience and the roaring of the hungry lions, eager for their human prey, when he stretched his hand on high, Over his lofty brow and royal features there came an expression of unutterable solemnity and command. "'Behold!' he shouted with a voice of thunder, which stilled the roar of the crowd. "'Behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of the avenging orcas burst forth against the false witness of my accusers!' The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld, with ineffable dismay, a vast vapor shooting from the summit of Vesuvius in the form of a gigantic pine-tree.
The trunk, blackness, the branches, fire. A fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red. That again blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare. There was a dead, hard-sunken silence through which there suddenly broke the roar of the lion, which was echoed back from within the building by the sharper and fiercer yells of its fellow beast. Dread seers were they of the burden of the atmosphere, and wild prophets of the wrath to come. Then there arose on high the universal shrieks of women. The men stared at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the earthquake beneath their feet. The walls of the theatre trembled, and beyond in the distance they heard the crash of falling roofs.
An instant more, and the mountain cloud seemed to roll toward them, dark and rapid, like a torrent. At the same time it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes, mixed with vast fragments of burning stone.
Over the crushing vines, over the desolate sheets, over the amphitheatre itself, far and wide, with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea, fell that awful shower. No longer thawed the crowd of Justice or Arbaces. Safety for themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly, each dashing, pressing, crushing against the other. Trampling recklessly over the fallen, amidst groans and oaths and prayers and sudden shrieks, the enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages. Whither should they fly? Some, anticipating a second earthquake, Hastened to their homes to load themselves with their more costly goods and escape while it was yet time. Others, dreading the showers of ashes that now fell first, torrent upon torrent, over the streets, rushed under the roofs of the nearest houses or temples or sheds, shelter of any kind, for protection from the terrors of the open air.
But darker and larger and mightier spread the cloud above them. It was sudden, and more ghastly night rushing upon the realm of noon. Darkness reigned, interrupted only by the occasional column of fire which escaped from the volcano, and the frequent lightning that encircled and illuminated momentarily the mountain which was at the central point of the fearful panorama. Pompeii had no streetlights. The frightened inhabitants brought their oil lamps into requisition to expedite their flight. Frequently, by the momentary light of these torches, parties of fugitives encountered each other, some hurrying toward the sea, others flying from the sea back to the land, for the ocean had retreated rapidly from the shore.
An utter darkness lay over it, and upon its groaning and tossing waves the storm of cinders and rock fell without the protection which the streets and roofs afforded to the land. Wild, haggard, ghastly, with supernatural fears, these groups encountered each other, but without the leisure to speak, to consult, to advise, for the showers fell now frequently, though not continuously, Extinguishing the lights, which showed to each other the death-like faces of the other, and hurrying all to seek refuge beneath the nearest shelter. The whole elements of civilization were broken up. Ever and anon by the flickering lights, one saw the thief hastening by the most solemn authorities of the law, laden with, and fearfully chuckling over, the produce of his sudden gains.
If, in darkness, wife was separated from husband or parent from child, vain was the hope of reunion. Each hurried blindly and confusedly on. Nothing in all the various and complicated machinery of social life was left save the primal law of self-preservation. It was under such circumstances that the city of Pompeii, with such of the inhabitants who failed to escape, was buried and preserved for futurity. The bodies of human beings and animals were charred by the heat, but their forms have been preserved as in a mould by the fiery ashes which fell around and upon them. We thus find in the museums at Pompeii and Naples the size and form of the victims of the eruption preserved to perfection by the substitution of plaster of Paris for the original mould.
Without such a support, the remains on exposure would crumble into dust.
At the time of destruction, November 23, 79 AD, Pompeii is said to have had about 30,000 inhabitants. The number of those who died and were buried in the ruins will never be ascertained. Up to 1824, 350 skeletons were found. Many have been discovered since that time, and many remain in the unexplored part of the city, while the remains of many have been removed with the detritus. It is, however, safe to assume that more than one-half of the population escaped the fiery death and sought shelter in the surrounding country. There is no doubt that soon after the disaster, many of the Pompeians rescued a large portion of their valuables from their ruined houses, but the site of the city remained lost for many centuries.
The first discovery of the ruins of Pompeii was made in 1595, and the first attempt at excavation was made in 1748. But it was not until 1860 that systematic exploration was pursued, and since then it has been scientifically carried on as far as means and opportunity have permitted. It is estimated that the whole of Pompeii will be cleared in about 50 years' time. At the time of my visit to the ruins, excavation was in active progress. With pickaxe and shovel, the ashes and pumice stone, which cover and fill the streets and houses, are loosened, and a small army of boys is employed to convey the same in baskets to hand carts, which are propelled by hand power over a temporary railway track. The workmen at this time were engaged in cleaning a large house, evidently an aristocratic residence, with walls and ceilings beautifully decorated by paintings representing female beauty and animal life.
The pictures are so well preserved that it seems almost next to impossible to realize that the artist and former owner are dead, and that they have been buried in the ruins for nearly 2,000 years. At this place, the houses are about ten feet under the surface of the soil. The workmen exercise great care in bringing all objects of interest in as perfect a condition as possible to the surface, after which they are brought to the museum at Naples, where they are examined, classified, and deposited in their appropriate places. The Naples Museum has become a great treasure house, In which the students of ancient history for ages to come will have an opportunity to study the interesting lesson of the high civilization of remote ages.
The objects of special interest to the surgeon in this great collection of ancient art are contained in a glass case and are properly numbered and described in the catalogue. They are the surgical instruments. These instruments were found in a house which has since been called the surgeon's house. They are made of bronze, and some of them show a high degree of artistic workmanship. Some of them show the destructive effect of heat and oxidation, while others are in a state of excellent preservation, as will be seen from the illustrations. The illustrations are taken from specimens from the Naples Museum by Domenico Monaco, and E. Neville Rolfe, Naples, 1895. A quadrivalve speculum, which is one of the most interesting and perfect specimens of the collection, is unfortunately not among the illustrations.
a. Actual cautery, length 10 inches, official number 78,034. b. Bivalve speculum working on a central pivot. Length 6 inches. Width, when open, 2 1⁄2 inches. Official number 7831. C. Scissors with a spring like shears. Length 4 inches. Official number 78,000 5. D. A male catheter which is almost a facsimile of the one devised by J. L. Petit in the last century. At the closed end is an eye, as in the modern instrument. Length 10.5 inches. Official number 78,026. E.
Hook. Length 6 inches. Official number 78,056. F. Point of injection syringe with eight small perforations near the distal end. The other end was, no doubt, filled with a syringe. Length, six inches, official number, seventy-eight thousand, two hundred thirty-five. G. Pompeian forceps, formed of two branches, crossing and working on a pivot. Each branch is fitted with an engine-turned handle and a spoon-shaped blade. A powerful forceps undoubtedly used for the extraction of foreign bodies. Length 8 inches. Official number 8. H.
Forceps with serrated bite. Length 4 1⁄2 inches. Official number 78032. I. Cupping glass of bronze. Height 6 inches. Diameter 3 inches. Official number 77,991. J.
Medicine box with medicines. 5 by 3 inches. Official number 78,199. K. Spatula for mixing ointments. Length 7 inches. Official number 77,726. L.
Lancet for bleeding. Length 5 inches. Official number 78003. M. Phleam for bleeding horses. Length 5 1⁄2 inches. Official number 78007. N.
Forceps. Length 4 1⁄2 inches. Official number 77,982. O. Toothed dissecting forceps with the engraved name ACAAGLVSF. Length 7 ½ inches. Official number 77,985. P. Choca for tapping with a hole at the end for the escape of the fluid. Length 5 inches. Official number 78008. Q.
Small spoon with bone handle, ending in the head of a ram. Length 5 1⁄2 inches. Official number 78000. R.
Female catheter. Length 4 inches. Official number 78027. S.
Bisturi, the blade oxidized and the handle in bronze. Length, 5 3 quarter inches. Official number 77,637. T. Tri-valve speculum, an instrument which, like the bivalve and the quadri-valve, has been much discussed by archaeologists and physicians. It is composed of three valves standing at right angles to the rest of the instrument, and jointly dependent on one another in the expansion transmitted only to one of them. By turning the screw, one valve is drawn nearer the operator, and this forces the other two to open in a side-long direction. The instrument can be held by the two curved handles with the left hand, while the right hand turns the screw. Length 8 1⁄2 inches. Widest expansion of the valves 1 1⁄2 inches.
Official number 78030. U.
Spatula. Length 7 inches. Official number 78,733. V. A metallic case containing surgical instruments. Length 8 by 3 quarter inches. Official number 77144. These are some of the most important instruments found in the ruins of Pompeii, and which were employed by our ancestors two thousand years ago in the practice of surgery. I searched carefully, but without a veil, for traces of needles or something else which would indicate that at that time wounds were sutured. The collection contains no saws, traphines, chisels, or any other instruments for operations upon bones. All of the instruments, with the exception of the specula and catheters, are diminutive in size as compared with the same instruments of less remote and modern times.
The absence of saws and chisels is noteworthy, As among the agricultural instruments, these tools are represented by specimens of a high degree of perfection.
In the writings of Hippocrates, Rasputores, Mallet and Trephene are mentioned, and consequently must have been used in operations upon bones other than those of the skull. Hippocrates gives very minute directions as to the use of the Trephene in the treatment of fractures of the skull. With regard to trepanning, when there is a necessity for it, the following particulars should be known. If you have had the management of the case from the first, you must not at once saw the bone down to the mennings, for it is not proper that the membrane should be laid bare and exposed to injuries for a length of time, as in the end it may become fungus. And there is another danger if you saw the bone down to the mennings and remove it at once.
Lest in the act of sawing you should wound the mennings. But in trepanning, when only a very little of the bone remains to be sawed through, and the bone can be moved, you must desist from sawing and leave the bone to fall out of itself. For to a bone not sawed through, and where a portion is left of the sawing, no mischief can happen, for the portion now left is sufficiently thin. In other respects, you must conduct the treatment as may appear suitable to the wound, and in trepanning, you must frequently remove the trepan, on account of the heat in the bone, and plunge it into cold water. For the trepan, being heated by running round, and heating and drying the bone, burns it, and makes a larger piece of bone around the sawing to drop off than would otherwise do.
And if you wish to saw at once down to the membrane and then remove the bone, you must also in like manner frequently take out the trepan and dip it into cold water. But if you have not charge of the treatment from the first, but undertake it from another after time, you must saw the bone at once down to the mennings with a serrated trepan, and in doing so must frequently take out the trepan and examine with a sound, and otherwise along the track of the instrument. For the bone is much sooner sawn through. Provided there be matter below it and in it, and it often happens that the bone is more superficial, especially if the wound is situated in that part of the head where the bone is rather thinner than in other places.
But you must take care where you apply the trepan and see that you do so only where it appears to be particularly thick, and, having fixed the instrument there, that you frequently make examinations and endeavor by moving the bone to bring it up. Having removed it, you must apply the other suitable remedies to the wound. And if, when you have the management of the treatment from the first, you wish to saw through the bone at once and remove it from the membrane, you must in like manner examine the track of the instrument frequently with the sound, and see that it is fixed on the thickest part of the bone, and endeavor to remove the bone by moving it about. But if you use a perforator, you must not penetrate to the membrane, if you operate on a case which you have had the charge of from the first, but must leave a thin scale of bone as described in the process of sawing.
As Hippocrates at one time lived and practiced in Athens during a great epidemic, it appears strange that his teachings in reference to the treatment of injuries of the skull should not have reached Pompeii, As evidenced by the absence of trapans and other bone instruments in the house of the surgeon.
If we judge the worth of the Pompeian surgeon from the collection of instruments he left behind him, it is evident that bloody operations were confined to bleeding, cupping, extraction of foreign bodies, and opening of abscesses. The metallic medicine box, the spatula and spoon, indicate that the surgeons of that time made free use of medicines and ointments in the treatment of injuries and disease. The instruments and implements of wood, splints, etc., were of course destroyed by fire and heat, and their absence in the collection leaves undoubtedly a large gap in the surgical resources of the Pompeian surgeon.
Surgeon's House. The surgeon's house does not differ from the private houses in its vicinity. It is roofless like the rest, all that remains being the bare walls. It is here that most of the surgical instruments were found. This house was undoubtedly occupied by the principal surgeon of Pompeii, who ministered to those in need of surgical aid. It is here that bleeding and cupping were practiced for all kinds of ills, real and imaginary. It is difficult to imagine what transpired from day to day. That the surgeon was a busy man there can be but little doubt. Competition was then not as active and pressing as it is now, and it is therefore safe to assume that the capacious waiting room was crowded day after day by patients anxious to be bled, These bare walls, if they could talk, could tell of many sad and exciting scenes.
Fainting from loss of blood and writhing under the How often the neighbourhood must have been disturbed by the cries of the suffering and the shrieks of the tortured. How often the atmosphere and adjacent streets must have been stifled with the smell of burned human flesh. Let us hope that the master escaped, leaving in his haste his instruments of skill and torture as lasting mementos of his so suddenly interrupted professional career. The house is deserted and silent now, a permanent reminder of the great antiquity of the art of surgery. If the last representative of Pompeian surgery could return to-day, and behold the improvements in surgery which have been made since his time, he would indeed be astonished and amazed.
What would be his surprise if he could visit one of our modern hospitals and inspect an aseptic operating room? He would find his old occupation gone. No need now for lancet, cupping-glass, and actual cautery. He would find the science of surgery developed to a wonderful degree of perfection, and its practice in consonance with its principles. He could make use of anaesthesia to prevent pain, as Mark's bandage to guard against haemorrhage, and operate under aseptic precautions to protect accidental and intentional wounds against complications, the treatment of which made up a large part of the work of the ancient surgeon. He would perhaps be astonished to learn that since Pompeii was buried, surgery not only came to a standstill, but retrograded for centuries.
and that its present state of perfection is owing largely to the improvements and advancements made during the present century. Let us not forget, however, that our colleagues of the distant past, possessed of a primitive knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology, and armed with few and imperfect instruments to practice their art, labored faithfully in the interest of suffering humanity, and unquestionably did much toward prolonging the lives and adding to the comfort and happiness of those who were entrusted to their care.
Pompeian Surgery. There can be but little doubt that the Pompeian surgeons practiced surgery in accordance with the teachings of Hippocrates. Hippocrates, who is justly entitled to be called the father of medicine, was born on the island of Kos, 450 BC. Hence, his life-work was contemporaneous with the early history of Pompeii. It is not difficult to conceive that his teachings penetrated to this city, or that some of its surgeons might have been his pupils. In all probability, Pompeian surgery was Hippocratic surgery. As has been remarked before, the instruments which have been recovered from its ruins so far seem to indicate that no major operations were performed at that time, and that the surgeon's work was limited to cupping, bleeding, the treatment of injuries, and the performance of minor operations.
The discovery of a number of very ingenious specula in the house of the surgeon furnishes us with positive evidence that at that time gynecology was not practiced as a specialty, but constituted a legitimate part of the surgeon's work. Considering the character of the moral atmosphere of Pompey, It is not astonishing to learn that diseases of the genitourinary organs taxed the ingenuity and occupied much of the time and attention of its surgeons, as shown by the different kinds of specula then in use, and the wonderfully perfect construction of the male and female catheter. The numerous wine shops and houses of prostitution Private and public, that constitute such a conspicuous part of the ruins of Pompeii, stand as lasting monuments of the debauchery and licentiousness of its former inhabitants, and furnish a satisfactory explanation of the prevalence of genitourinary diseases among males and females, and which so often necessitated the services of a surgeon.
The fleam for bleeding horses found in the instrumentarium of the Pompeian surgeon goes to show that he extended his sphere of usefulness to the domestic animals, which furnished him with an additional field for observation and undoubtedly added materially to his income. That the surgeon of Pompeii was a man of means and good social position is amply testified to by the size and location of his house. This house is capacious, and is located in the aristocratic part of the city. A liberal income undoubtedly rewarded his labors and placed him in a position to enjoy the luxuries of life, which seems to have been the main object in life of the mass of the people at that time. The existence of a separate house occupied as a pharmacy shows that the people then, as now, He had great faith in the healing powers of herbs and drugs, and the medicine box found in the surgeon's house was replenished from time to time from this source, and its contents were undoubtedly frequently made use of by the surgeon in the practice of his profession.
-
13 13 - The Reynolds Pamphlet 53:17
The Reynolds Pamphlet by Alexander Hamilton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, please visit the website at www.bibrovox.com. The Reynolds Pamphlet by Alexander Hamilton The spirit of Jacobinism, if not entirely a new spirit, has at least been clothed with a more gigantic body and armed with more powerful weapons than it ever before possessed. It is perhaps not too much to say that it threatens more extensive and complicated mischiefs to the world than have hitherto flowed from the three great scourges of mankind. War, pestilence, and famine. To what point it will ultimately lead society, it is impossible for human foresight to pronounce.
But there is just ground to apprehend that its progress may be marked with calamities, of which the dreadful incidents of the French Revolution afford a very faint image. Incessantly busied in undermining all the props of public security and private happiness, it seems to threaten the political and moral world with a complete overthrow. A principal engine by which this spirit endeavors to accomplish its purpose is that of calumny. It is essential to its success that the influence of men of upright principles, disposed and able to resist its enterprises, shall be at all events destroyed. Not content with traducing their best efforts for the public good, with misrepresenting their purest motives, with inferring criminality from actions innocent or laudable, the most direct falsehoods are invented and propagated with undaunted effrontery and unrelenting perseverance.
Lies often detected and refuted are still revived and repeated in the hope that the reputation may have been forgotten or that the frequency and boldness of accusation may supply the place of truth and proof. The most profligate men are encouraged, probably bribed, certainly with patronage if not with money, to become informers and accusers, and when tales which their characters alone ought to discredit are refuted by evidence and facts which oblige the patrons of them to abandon their support, they still continue, in corroding whispers, to wear away the reputation If, luckily for the conspirators against Donisfame, any little foible or folly can be traced out in one whom they desire to persecute, it becomes at once in their hands a two-edged sword.
by which to wound the public character and stab the private felicity of the person. With such men nothing is sacred. Even the peace of an unoffending and amiable wife is welcome repast to their insatiate fury against the husband. In the gratification of this baleful spirit, we not only hear the Jacobin newspapers continually ring with odious insinuations and charges against many of our most virtuous citizens, but not satisfied with this, a measure new in this country has been lately adopted to give greater efficacy to the system of defamation. Periodical pamphlets issue from the same presses full-freighted with misrepresentation and falsehood. Artfully calculated to hold up the opponents of the faction to the jealousy and distrust of the present generation, and, if possible, to transmit their names with dishonor to posterity.
Even the great and multiplied services, the tried and rarely equaled virtues of a Washington, can secure no exemption. How, then, can I, with pretensions every way inferior, expect to escape? And if truly this be, as every appearance indicates, a conspiracy of vice against virtue, Ought I not rather to be flattered that I have been so long and so peculiarly an object of persecution? Ought I to regret if there be anything about me so formidable to the faction as to have made me worthy to be distinguished by the plentitude of its rancor and venom? It is certain that I have had a pretty copious experience of its malignity. For the honor of human nature, it is to be hoped that the examples are not numerous of men so greatly calumniated and persecuted as I have been with so little cause.
I dare appeal to my immediate fellow-citizens of whatever political party for the truth of the assertion, that no man ever carried into public life a more unblemished pecuniary reputation than that with which I undertook the office of Secretary of the Treasury, a character marked by an indifference to the acquisition of property rather than an avidity for it. With such a character, however natural it was to expect criticisms and opposition as to the political principles which I might manifest or be supposed to entertain, as to the wisdom or expediency of the plans which I might propose, or as to the skill, care, or diligence with which the business of my department might be executed, it was not natural to expect, nor did I expect, that my fidelity or integrity in a pecuniary sense would ever be called in question.
But on his head a mortifying disappointment has been experienced. Without the slightest foundation, I have been repeatedly held up to the suspicions of the world as a man directed in his administration by the most sordid views, who did not scruple to sacrifice the public to his private interests, his duty and honor to the sinister accumulation of wealth. Merely because I retained an opinion once common to me and the most influential of those who opposed me, that the public debt ought to be provided for on the basis of the contract upon which it was created, I have been wickedly accused with wantonly increasing the public burden many millions in order to promote a stock-jobbing interest of myself and friends.
Merely because a member of the House of Representatives entertained a different idea for me as to the legal effect of appropriation laws and did not understand accounts, I was exposed to the imputation of having committed a deliberate and criminal violation of the laws and to the suspicion of being a defaulter for millions, so as to have been driven to the painful necessity of calling for a formal and solemn inquiry. The inquiry took place. It was conducted by a committee of fifteen members of the House of Representatives. A majority of them either might decide He said, Mr. Giles of Virginia, who had commenced the attack, was of the committee. The officers and books of the Treasury were examined.
The transactions between the several banks and the Treasury were scrutinized. Even my private accounts with those institutions were laid open to the committee, and every possible facility given to the inquiry. The result was a complete demonstration that the suspicions which had been entertained were groundless. Those which had taken the fastest hold were that the public monies had been made subservient to loans, discounts, and accommodations to myself and friends. The committee in reference to this point reported thus. It appears from the affidavits of the cashier, and several officers from the Bank of the United States, and several of the directors of the cashier and other officers from the Bank of New York, that the Secretary of the Treasury never has either directly or indirectly for himself or any other person procured any discount or credit from either of the said banks upon the basis of any public monies which at any time have been deposited therein under his direction.
And the committee are satisfied that no moneys of the United States, whether before or after they have passed to the credit of the Treasurer, have ever been directly or indirectly used for or applied to any purposes but those of the government, except so far as all moneys deposited in a bank are concerned in the general operations thereof. The report, which I have always understood was unanimous, contains in other respects with considerable detail the materials of a complete exculpation. My enemies, finding no handle for their malice, abandoned the pursuit. Yet, unwilling to leave any ambiguity upon the point, when I determined to resign my office, I gave early previous notice of it to the House of Representatives for the declared purpose of affording an opportunity for legislative discrimination, if any ground for it had been discovered.
Not the least step towards it was taken, from which I have a right to infer the universal conviction of the House that no cause existed, and to consider the result as a complete vindication. On another occasion, a worthless man of the name of Francis found encouragement to bring forward to the House of Representatives a formal charge against me of unfaithful conduct in office. A committee of the House was appointed to inquire, consisting in his case also, partly of some of my most intelligent and active enemies. The issue was a unanimous exculpation of me, as will appear by the following extract from the journals of the House of Representatives of the 19th of February, 1794. The House resumed the consideration of the report of the committee to whom was referred the memorial of Andrew G.
Francis, whereupon, resolved, that the reasons assigned by the Secretary of the Treasury for refusing payment of the warrants referred to in the memorial are fully sufficient to justify his conduct, and that in the whole course of this transaction the Secretary and other officers of the Treasury have acted a meritorious part toward the public, resolved, that the charge exhibited in the memorial against the Secretary of the Treasury relative to the purchase of the ... expectation may seem, it would betray an ignorance of the true character of the Jacobin system. It is a maxim deeply engrafted in that dark system that no character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.
It is well understood by its disciples that every calumny makes some proselytes, and even retains some, since justification seldom circulates as rapidly and as widely as slander. The number of those who from doubt proceed to suspicion, and thence to belief of imputed guilt, is continually augmenting. And the public mind, fatigued at length with resistance to the calumnies which eternally assail it, is apt in the end to sit down with the opinion that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent. Relying upon this weakness of human nature, the Jacobin Scandal Club, though often defeated, constantly returned to the charge. Old calumnies are served up afresh, and every pretext is seized to add to the catalogue.
The person whom they seek to blacken by dint of repeated strokes of their brush becomes a demon in their own eyes, though he might be pure and bright as an angel but for the daubling of those wizard painters. Of all the vile attempts which have been made to injure my character, that which has been lately revived in numbers five and six of the history of the United States for 1796 is the most vile. This it will be impossible for any intelligent, I will not say candid, man to doubt, when he shall have accompanied me through the examination. I owe perhaps to my friends an apology for condescending to give a public explanation. A just pride with reluctance stoops to a formal vindication against so despicable a contrivance, and is inclined rather to oppose to it the uniform of evidence of an upright character.
This would be my conduct on the present occasion, did not the tale seem to derive a sanction from the names of three men of some weight in consequence in the society? A circumstance which I trust will excuse me for paying attention to a slander that without this prop would defeat itself by intrinsic circumstances of absurdity and malice. The charge against me is a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of improper pecuniary speculation. My real crime is an amorous connection with his wife, for a considerable time with his privity and connivance, if not originally brought on by a combination between the husband and wife with the design to extort money from me. This confession is not made without a blush.
I cannot be the apologist of any vice because the ardor of passion may have made it mine. I can never cease to condemn myself for the pang which it may inflict in a bosom eminently entitled to all my gratitude, fidelity, and love. But that bosom will approve that even at so great an expense I should effectively wipe away a more serious stain from a name which it cherishes with no less elevation than tenderness. The public, too, will, I trust, excuse the confession. The necessity of it to my defense against a more heinous charge could alone have extorted from me so painful and in decorum. Before I proceed to an exhibition of the positive proof which repels the charge, I shall analyze the documents from which it is deduced, and I am mistaken if with discerning and candid minds more would be necessary, but I desire to obviate the suspicions of the most suspicious.
The first reflection which occurs on a perusal of the documents is that it is morally impossible I should have been foolish as well as depraved enough to employ so vile an instrument as Reynolds for such insignificant ends, as are indicated by different parts of the story itself. My enemies, to be sure, have kindly portrayed me as another chartre on the score of moral principle. But they have been ever bountiful in ascribing to me talents. It has suited their purpose to exaggerate such as I may possess, and to attribute to them an influence to which they are not entitled. But the present accusation imputes to me as much folly as wickedness. All the documents show, and it is otherwise matter of notoriety, that Reynolds was an obscure, unimportant, and profligate man.
Nothing could be more weak because nothing could be more unsafe than to make use of such an instrument. To use him, too, without any indeterminate agent more worthy of confidence who might keep me out of sight. To write him numerous letters, recording the objects of the improper connection, for this is pretended, and that the letters were afterwards burnt at my request. To unbosom myself to him with a prodigality of confidence, by very unnecessarily telling him, as he alleges, of a connection and speculation between myself and Mr. Dorr. It is very extraordinary if the head of the money department of a country, being unprincipled enough to sacrifice his trust and his integrity, could not have contrived objects of profit sufficiently large to have exaggerated the cooperation of men of far greater importance than Reynolds, and with whom there could have been due safety, and should have been driven to the necessity of uncanneling such a reptile to the instrument of his cupidity.
But moreover, the scale of the concern with Reynolds such as it is presented is contemptibly narrow for a rapacious speculating secretary of the treasury. Clingman, Reynolds, and his wife were manifestly in very close confidence with each other. It seems there was a free communication of secrets. Yet in clubbing their different items of information as to the supplies of money which Reynolds received for me, what did they amount to? Clingman states that Mrs. Reynolds told him that at a certain time her husband had received for me upwards of $1,100. A note is produced which shows that at one time fifty dollars were sent to him, and another note is produced by which, and the information of Reynolds himself through Klingman, it appears that at another time three hundred dollars were asked and refused.
Another sum of two hundred dollars is spoken of by Klingman as having been furnished to Reynolds at some other time. What a scale of speculation is this for the head of a public treasury? For one who, in the very publication that brings forward the charge, is represented as having procured to be funded at forty millions a debt which ought to have been discharged at ten or fifteen millions for the criminal purpose of enriching himself and his friends. He must have been a clumsy knave if he did not secure enough of this excess of twenty-five or thirty millions to have taken away all inducement to risk his character in such bad hands and in so huckstering away. Or, to have enabled him, if he did employ such an agent, to do it with more means and to better purpose.
It is curious that this rapacious secretary should at one time have furnished his speculating agent with the paltry sum of fifty dollars, and another have refused him the inconsiderable sum of three hundred dollars, declaring upon his honor that it was not in his power to furnish it. This declaration was true or not. If the last, the refusal, ill comports with the idea of a speculating connection. If the first, it is very singular that the head of the treasury engaged without scruple in schemes of profit should have been destitute of so small a sum. But if we suppose this officer to be living upon an inadequate salary without any collateral pursuits of gain, the appearances then are simple and intelligible enough applying to them the true key.
It appears that Reynolds and Klingman were detected by the then Comptroller of the Treasury in the odious crime of suborning a witness to commit perjury, for the purpose of obtaining letters of administration on the estate of a person who was living, in order to receive a small sum of money due to him from the Treasury. It is certainly extraordinary that the confidential agent of the head of that department should have been in circumstances to induce a resort to so miserable an expedient. It is odd, if there was a speculating connection, that it was not more profitable both to the secretary and to his agent than are indicated by the circumstances disclosed. It is also a remarkable and very instructive fact that notwithstanding the great confidence and intimacy which subsisted between Klingman Reynolds and his wife, and which continued till after the period of the liberation of the two former from the prosecution against them, neither of them has ever specified the objects of the pretended connection in speculation between Reynolds and me.
The pretext that the letters which contained the evidence were destroyed is no answer. They could not have been forgotten, and might have been disclosed from memory. The total omission of this could only have proceeded from the consideration that detail might have led to detection. The destruction of letters besides is a fiction which is refuted not only by the general improbability that I should put myself upon paper with so despicable a person on a subject which might expose me to infamy, but by the evidence of extreme caution on my part in this particular. resulting from the laconic and disguised form of the notes which are produced. They prove incontestably that there was an unwillingness to trust Reynolds with my handwriting.
The true reason was that I apprehended he might make use of it to impress upon others the belief of some pecuniary connection with me, and besides implicating my character, might render it the engine of a false credit, or turn it to some other sinister use. Hence the disguise, for my conduct in admitting at once and without hesitation that the notes were from me proves that it was never my intention by the expedient of disguising my hand to shelter myself from any serious inquiry. The accusation against me was never heard of till Klingman and Reynolds were under prosecution by the Treasury for an infamous crime. It will be seen by the document number 1a that during the endeavors of Klingman to obtain relief through the interposition of Mr.
Muhlenberg, he made to the latter the communication of my pretended criminality. It will be further seen by document number 2a that Brennells had, while in prison, conveyed to the ears of Messrs. Monroe and Venable that he could give intelligence of my being concerned in speculation, and that he also supposed that he was kept in prison by a design on my part to oppress him and drive him away. And by his letter to Klingman on the 13th of December, after he was released from prison, it also appears that he was actuated by a spirit of revenge against me, for he declares that he will have satisfaction from me at all events. Adding as addressed to Klingman, and you only, I trust. Three important inferences flow from these circumstances.
One, that the accusation against me was an auxiliary to the efforts of Klingman and Reynolds to get released from a disgraceful prosecution. Another, that there was a vindictive spirit against me, at least on the part of Reynolds. The third, that he confided in Klingman as a coagitator of the plan of vengeance. These circumstances, according to every estimate of the credit due to accusers, ought to destroy their testimony. To what credit are persons entitled, who, in telling a story, are governed by the double motive of escaping from disgrace and punishment, and of gratifying revenge? As to Mrs. Reynolds, if she was not an accomplice, as it is too probable she was, her situation would naturally subject her to the will of her husband, but enough besides will appear in the sequel to show that her testimony merits no attention.
The letter which has just been cited deserves a more particular attention. As it was produced by Klingman, there is a chasm of three lines, which lines are manifestly essential to explain the sense. It may be inferred from the context that these deficient lines would unfold the cause of the resentment which is expressed. "'Twas from them that might have been learnt the true nature of the transaction. The expunging of them is a violent presumption that they would have contradicted the purpose for which the letter was produced. A witness offering such a mutilated piece discredits himself." The mutilation is alone satisfactory proof of contrivance and imposition. The manner of accounting for it is frivolous.
The words of the letter are strong. Satisfaction is to be had at all events. Perfas et nefas, and Klingman is the chosen confidential agent of the laudable plan of vengeance. It must be confessed he was not wanting in his part. Reynolds, as will be seen by No. 2a, alleges that a merchant came to him and offered as a volunteer to be his bail, who he suspected had been instigated to it by me, and after being decoyed to the place the merchant wished to carry him to, he refused being his bail, unless he would deposit a sum of money to some considerable amount, which he could not do, and was in consequence committed to prison. Clayman, No. 4a, tells the same story in substance, though with some difference in form, leaving to be implied what Reynolds expresses in naming Henry.
The deposition of this respectable citizen, number 23, gives the lie to both and shows that he was in fact the agent of Klingman. From motives of goodwill to him as his former bookkeeper, that he never had any communication with me concerning either of them till after they were both in custody, that when he came as a messenger to me from one of them, I not only declined interposing in their behalf, but informed Mr. Seckle that they had been guilty of a crime and advised him to have nothing to do with them. This single fact goes far to invalidate the whole story. It shows plainly the disregard of truth and the malice by which the parties were actuated. Other important inferences are to be drawn from the transaction.
Had I been conscious that I had anything to fear from Reynolds of the nature which has been pretended, should I have warned Mr. Seckle against having anything to do with them? Should I not rather have encouraged him to have come to their assistance? Should I not have been eager to promote their liberation? But this is not the only instance in which I acted a contrary part. Klingman testifies in number five that I would not permit Francis, a clerk at my office, to become their bail, but signified to him that if he did it, he must quit the department. Clingman states in Number 4A that my note in answer to Reynolds' application for a loan towards a subscription to the Lancaster Turnpike was in his possession from about the time it was written, June 1792.
This circumstance, apparently trivial, is very explanatory. To what end had Clingman the custody of this note all that time if it was not part of a project to lay the foundation for some false accusation? It appears from number five that Francis has said, or was stated to have said, something to my prejudice. If my memory serves me aright, it was that he had been my agent in some speculations. When Francis was interrogated concerning it, he absolutely denied that he had said anything of the kind. The charge which this same Francis afterwards preferred against me to the House of Representatives, and the fate of it, have already been mentioned. It is illustrative of the nature of the combination which was formed against me.
There are other features in the documents which are relied upon to constitute the charge against me that are of a nature to corroborate the inference to be drawn from the particulars which had been noticed. But there is no need to be over-minute. I am much mistaken if the view which has been taken of the subject is not sufficient without anything further to establish my innocence with every discerning and fair mind. I proceed in the next place to offer a frank and plain solution of the enigma by giving a history of the origin and progress of my connection with Mrs. Reynolds, of its discovery real and pretended by the husband, and of the disagreeable embarrassments to which it exposed me. This history will be supported by the letters of Mr.
and Mrs. Reynolds, which leave no room for doubt of the principal facts, and at the same time explain with precision the objects of the little notes from me which have been published, showing clearly that such of them as have related to money had no No reference to any concern in speculation. As the situation which will be disclosed will fully explain every ambiguous appearance and meet satisfactorily the written documents, nothing more can be requisite to my justification. For frail indeed will be the tenure by which the most blameless man will hold his reputation if the assertions of three of the most abandoned characters in the community, two of them stigmatized by the discrediting crime which has been mentioned, are sufficient to blast it.
The business of accusation would soon become in such a case a regular trade, and men's reputations would be bought and sold like any marketable commodity. Some time in the summer of the year 1791, a woman called at my house in the city of Philadelphia and asked to speak with me in private. I attended her into a room apart from the family. With a seeming air of affliction, she informed me that she was a daughter of a Mr. Lewis, sister to a Mr. G. Livingston of the State of New York, and wife to a Mr. Reynolds, whose father was in the Commissary Department during the war with Great Britain, that her husband, who for a long time had treated her very cruelly, had lately left her to live with another woman.
and in so destitute a condition that, though desirous of returning to her friends, she had not the means, that, knowing I was a citizen of New York, she had taken the liberty to apply to my humanity for assistance. I replied that her situation was a very interesting one, that I was disposed to afford her assistance to convey her to her friends, but this at the moment not being convenient to me, which was the fact, I must request the place of her residence to which I should bring or send a small supply of money. She told me the street and the number of the house where she lodged. In the evening, I put a bank bill in my pocket and went to the house. I inquired for Mrs. Reynolds and was shown upstairs, at the head of which she met me and conducted me into a bedroom.
I took the bill out of my pocket and gave it to her. Some conversation ensued from which it was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would be acceptable. After this, I had frequent meetings with her, most of them at my own house, Mrs. Hamilton with her children being absent on a visit to her father. In the course of a short time, she mentioned to me that her husband had solicited a reconciliation, and affected to consult me about it. I advised to it, and was soon after informed by her that it had taken place. She told me besides that her husband had been engaged in speculation, and she believed could give information respecting the conduct of some persons in the department which would be useful.
I sent for Reynolds, who came to me accordingly. In the course of our interview, he confessed that he had obtained a list of claims from a person in my department, which he had made use of in his speculations. I invited him, by the expectation of my friendship and good offices, to disclose the person. After some affectation of scruple, he pretended to yield, and described the infidelity to Mr. Dewar, from whom he said he had obtained the list in New York, while he, Dewar, was in the department. As Mr. Dewar had resigned his office some time before the seat of government was removed to Philadelphia, this discovery, if it had been true, was not very important. Yet it was the interest of my passions to appear to set value upon it, and to continue the expectation of friendship and good offices.
Mr. Reynolds told me he was going to Virginia, and on his return would point out something in which I could serve him. I do not know, but he said something about employment in a public office. On his return, he asked employment as a clerk in the Treasury Department. The knowledge I had acquired of him was decisive against such a request. I parried it by telling him what was true, that there was no vacancy in my immediate office, and that the appointment of clerks in the other branches of the department was left to the chiefs of the respective branches. Reynolds alleged, as Chingman relates number four a, as a topic of complaint against me, that I had promised him employment and had disappointed him.
The situation with the wife would naturally incline me to conciliate this man. It is possible I may have used vague expressions which raised expectation, but the more I learned of the person, the more inadmissible his employment in a public office became. Some material reflections will occur here to a discerning mind. Could I have preferred my private gratification to the public interest, should I not have found the employment he desired for a man who it was so convenient to me on my own statement to lay under obligations? Had I any such connection with him as he has since pretended, it is likely that he would have wanted other employment, or is it likely that wanting it, I should have hazarded his resentment by a persevering refusal.
This little circumstance shows at once the delicacy of my conduct in its public relations and the impossibility of my having had the connection pretended with Reynolds. The intercourse with Mrs. Reynolds in the meantime continued, and though various reflections, in which a further knowledge of Reynolds' character and the suspicion of some concert between the husband and wife bore apart, induced me to wish a cessation of it, yet her conduct made it extremely difficult to disentangle myself. All the appearances of violent attachment and of agonizing distress of the idea of a relinquishment were played off with a most imposing art. This, though it did not make me entirely the doom of the plot, yet kept me in a state of irresolution.
My sensibility, perhaps my vanity, admitted the possibility of a real fondness, and led me to adopt a plan of a gradual discontinuance rather than a sudden interruption, at least calculated to give pain if a real partiality existed. Mrs. Reynolds, on the other hand, employed every effort to keep up my attention and visits. Her pen was freely employed, and her letters were filled with those tender and pathetic effusions which would have been natural when a woman truly fond and neglected. One day, I received a letter from her, which is in the appendix, number one, B, intimating a discovery by her husband. It was a matter of doubt with me whether there had been really a discovery by accident, or whether the time for the catastrophe of the plot was arrived.
The same day, being the 15th of December, 1791, I received from Mr. Reynolds the letter, number 2b, by which he informed me of the detection of his wife in the act of writing a letter to me, and that he had obtained from her a discovery of her connection with me, suggesting that it was the consequence of an undue advantage taken of her distress. In answer to this, I sent him a note or a message desiring him to call upon me at my office, which I think he did the same day. He, in substance, repeated the tapas contained in this letter, and concluded, as he had done there, that he was resolved to have satisfaction. I replied that he knew best what evidence he had of the alleged connection between me and his wife, that I neither admitted nor denied it, that if he knew of any injury I had done him entitling him to satisfaction, it lay with him to name it.
He traveled over the same ground as before, and again concluded with the same vague claim of satisfaction, but without specifying the kind which would content him. It was easy to understand that he wanted money, and to prevent an explosion I resolved to gratify him. But willing to manage his delicacy, if he had any, I reminded him that I had at our first interview made him a promise of service, that I was disposed to do it as far as might be proper, and in my power, and requested him to consider in what manner I could do it, and to write to me. He withdrew with a promise of compliance. Two days later, the seventeenth of December, he wrote me the letter, number three, B. The evident drift of this letter is to exaggerate the injury done by me, to make a display of sensibility, and to magnify the atonement which was to be required.
It, however, comes to no conclusion, but proposes a meeting at the George Tavern, or at some other place more agreeable to me which I should name. On receipt of this letter, I called upon Reynolds and, assuming a decisive tone, told him that I was tired of his indecision and insisted upon his declaring to me explicitly what it was he aimed at. He again promised to explain by letter. On the 19th, I received the promised letter, number 4B, the essence of which is that he was willing to take $1,000 as the plaster of his wounded honor. I determined to give it to him, and did so in two payments as per receipts, number 5 and 6, dated the 22nd of December and 3rd of January. It is a little remarkable that an avaricious, speculating Secretary of the Treasury should have been so straitened for money as to be obliged to satisfy an engagement of this sort by two different payments.
On the 17th of January, I received the letter number five, by which Reynolds invites me to renew my visits to his wife. He had before requested that I would see her no more. The motive to this step appears in the conclusion of the letter. I rely upon your befriending me if there should anything offer that should be to my advantage as you express a wish to befriend me. Is the preexistence of a speculating connection reconcilable with this mode of expression? If I recollect rightly, I did not immediately accept the invitation, nor till after I had received several very importunate letters from Mrs. Reynolds. See her letters, number 8b, 9, and 10. On the 24th of March following, I received a letter from Reynolds, number 11, and on the same day, one from his wife, number 12.
These letters will further illustrate the obliging cooperation of the husband with his wife to ailment and to keep alive my connection with her. The letters from Reynolds, numbers 13 to 16, are an additional comment upon the same plan. It was a persevering scheme to spare no pains to levy contributions upon my passions on the one hand, and upon my apprehensions of discovery on the other. It is probably to number 14 that my note in these words was an answer. Tomorrow, what is requested will be done. It will hardly be possible today. The letter presses for the loan which is asked for today. A scarcity of cash which was not very uncommon is believed to have modeled the reply. The letter number seventeen is a masterpiece.
The husband there forbids my future visits to his wife, chiefly because I was careful to avoid publicity. It was probably necessary to the project of some deeper treason against me that I should be seen at the house. Hence was it contrived, with all the caution on my part to avoid it, that Klingman should occasionally see me. The interdiction was every way welcome, and was, I believe, strictly observed. On the second of June following, I received the letter number eighteen from Mrs. Reynolds, which proves that it was not her plan yet to let me off. It was probably the prelude to the letter from Reynolds, No. 19, soliciting a loan of $300 towards a subscription to the Lancaster Turnpike. Klingman's statement, No.
4a, admits on the information of Reynolds that to this letter the following note from me was an answer. It is utterly out of my power, I assure you, upon my honor, to comply with your request. Your note is returned. The letter itself demonstrates that here was no concern and speculation on my part. that the money is asked as a favor and as a loan to be reimbursed simply and without profit in less than a fortnight. My answer shows that even the loan was refused. The letter number 20 from Reynolds explains the object of my note in these words. In closed or $50, they could not be sent sooner, proving that this sum also was begged for in a very apologetic style as a mere loan. The letters of the twenty-fourth and thirtieth of August, number 21 and 22, furnished the key to the affair of the $200 mentioned by Klingman in number four, showing that this sum likewise was asked by way of loan towards furnishing a small boarding-house which Reynolds and his wife were, or pretended to be about, to set up.
These letters collectively furnish a complete elucidation of the nature of my transactions with Reynolds. They resolve them into an amorous connection with his wife, detected or pretended to be detected by the husband, imposing on me the necessity of a pecuniary composition with him, and leaving me afterwards under a duress for fear of disclosure, which was the instrument of levying upon me from time to time forced loans. They apply directly to this state of things the notes which Reynolds was so careful to preserve and which had been employed to excite suspicion. For, and the principles of these notes have not only been generally but particularly explained, I shall briefly notice the remaining two.
My dear sir, I expected to have heard the day after I had the pleasure of seeing you. This fragment, if truly part of a letter to Reynolds, denotes nothing more than a disposition to be civil to a man whom, as I said before, it was the interest of my passions to conciliate. But I verily believe it was not part of a letter to him, because I do not believe that I ever addressed him in such a style. It may very well have been part of a letter to some other person, procured by means of which I am ignorant, or it may have been the beginning of an intended letter, torn off, thrown into the chimney in my office, which was a common practice, and there, or after it had been swept out, picked up by Reynolds or some coadjutor of his.
There appears to have been more than one clerk in the department somehow connected with him. The endeavor shown by the letter number 17 to induce me to render my visits to Mrs. Reynolds more public, and the great care with which my little notes were preserved, justified the belief that at a period before it was attempted, the idea of implicating me in some accusation with a view to the advantage of the accusers was entertained. Hence the motive to pick up and preserve any fragment which might favor the idea of friendly or confidential correspondence. Secondly, the person Mr. Reynolds inquired for on Friday waited for him all the evening at his house from a little after seven. Mr. R may see him at any time today or tomorrow between the hours of two and three.
Mrs. Reynolds more than once communicated to me that Reynolds would occasionally relapse into discontent to his situation, would treat her very ill, hint at the assassination of me, and more openly threatened by way of revenge to inform Mrs. Hamilton. All this naturally gave some uneasiness. I could not be absolutely certain whether it was artifice or reality. In the workings of human inconsistency, it was very possible that the same man might be corrupt enough to compound for his wife's chastity, and yet have sensibility enough to be restless in the situation and to hate the cause of it. Reflections like these induced me for some time to use palliatives with the ill-humors which were announced to me.
Reynolds had called upon me in one of these discontented moods, real or pretended. I was unwilling to provoke him by the appearance of neglect, and having failed to be at home at the hour he had been permitted to call, I wrote to her the above note to obviate an ill-impression. The foregoing narrative and the remarks accompanying it have prepared the way for a perusal of the letters themselves. The more attention is used in this, the more entire will be the satisfaction which they will afford. It has been seen that an explanation on the subject was had co-temporarily, that is, in December 1792, with three members of Congress, F. A. Muhlenberg, J. Monroe, and A. Venable. It is proper that the circumstances of this transaction should be accurately understood.
The manner in which Mr. Muhlenberg became engaged in the affair is fully set forth in the document, Number 1A. It is not equally clear how the two other gentlemen came to embark in it. The phraseology in reference to this point in the close of number 1a and beginning of number 2a is rather equivocal. The gentlemen, if they please, can explain it. But, on the morning of the fifteenth of December, 1792, the above-mentioned gentlemen presented themselves at my office. Mr. Muhlenberg was then speaker. He introduced the subject by observing to me that they had discovered a very improper connection between me and a Mr. Reynolds. Extremely hurt by this mode of introduction, I arrested the progress of the discourse by giving way to very strong expressions of indignation.
The gentlemen explained, telling me in substance that I had misapprehended them, that they did not intend to take the fact for established, that their meaning was to apprise me that, unsought by them, information had been given them of an improper pecuniary connection between Mr. Reynolds and myself, that they had thought it their duty to pursue it, and had become possessed of some documents of a suspicious complexion, that they had contemplated the laying the matter before the President, but before they did this they thought it right to apprise me of the affair and to afford an opportunity of explanation. declaring at the same time that their agency in the matter was influenced solely by a sense of public duty, and by no motive of personal ill-will.
If my memory be correct, the notes from me in a disguised hand were now shown to me, which, without a moment's hesitation, I acknowledged to be mine. I replied that the affair was now put upon a different footing, That I always stood ready to meet fair inquiry with frank communication, that it happened in the present instance to be in my power by written documents to remove all doubt as to the real nature of the business, and fully to convince that nothing of the kind imputed to me did in fact exist. The same evening at my house was by mutual consent appointed for an explanation. I immediately after saw Mr. Wolcott, and for the first time informed him of the affair and of the interview just had, and delivering into his hands for perusal the documents of which I was possessed, I engaged him to be present at the intended explanation in the evening.
In the evening the proposed meeting took place, and Mr. Wolcott, according to my request, attended. The information which had been received at that time from Clingman Reynolds and his wife was communicated to me, and the notes were, I think again, exhibited. I stated in explanation the circumstances of my affair with Mrs. Reynolds and the consequences of it, and in confirmation produced the documents, number one, be to twenty-two. One or more of the gentlemen, Mr. Wolcott's certificate, number twenty-four, mentions one, Mr. Venable, but I think the same may be said of Mr. Muhlenberg, was struck with so much conviction before I had gotten through the communication that they delicately urged me to discontinue it as necessary.
I insisted upon going through the whole, and did so. The result was a full and unequivocal acknowledgment on the part of the three gentlemen of perfect satisfaction with the explanation and expressions of regret at the trouble and embarrassment which had been occasioned to me. Mr. Muhlenberg and Mr. Venable, in particular, manifested a degree of sensibility on the occasion. Mr. Monroe was more cold, but entirely explicit. One of the gentlemen, I think, expressed a hope that I was also satisfied with their conduct in conducting the inquiry. I answered that they knew I had been hurt at the opening of the affair, that this expected I was satisfied with their conduct, and considered myself as having been treated with candor or with fairness and liberality.
I do not now pretend to recollect the exact terms. I took the next morning a memorandum of the substance of what was said to me, which will be seen by a copy of it transmitted in a letter to each of the gentlemen. Number 25. I deny absolutely, as alleged by the editor of the publication in question, that I entreated a suspension of the communication to the president, or that from the beginning to the end of the inquiry I asked any favor or indulgence whatsoever, and that I discovered any symptom different from that of a proud consciousness of innocence. Some days after the explanation, I wrote to the three gentlemen the letter number 26 already published. That letter evinces the light in which I considered myself as standing in their view.
I received from Mr. Muhlenberg and Mr. Monroe, in answer, the letters number 27 and 28. Thus the affair remained till the pamphlets number five and six of the history of the U States for 1796 appeared, with the exception of some dark whispers which were communicated to me by a friend in Virginia, and to which I replied by a statement of what had passed. When I saw number five, though it was evidence of a base infidelity somewhere, yet firmly believing that nothing more than a want of due care was chargeable upon either of the three gentlemen who had made the inquiry, I immediately wrote to each of them a letter of which number twenty-five is a copy, in full confidence that their answer would put the whole business at rest.
I ventured to believe, from the appearances on their part at closing our former interview on the subject, that their answers would have been both cordial and explicit. I acknowledge that I was astonished when I came to read in the pamphlet number six the conclusion of the document number five containing the equivocal phrase, which seemed to imply that this had been a mere piece of management, and that the impression given me had not been reciprocal. The appearance of duplicity incensed me, but resolving to proceed with caution and moderation, I thought the first proper step was to inquire of the gentleman whether the paper was genuine. A letter was written for this purpose, the copy of which I have mislaid.
I afterwards received from Messrs. Muhlenberg and Venable the letters number 29, 30, and 31. Receiving no answer from Mr. Monroe, and hearing of his arrival at New York, I called upon him. The issue of the interview was that an answer was to be given by him in conjunction with Mr. Muhlenberg and Mr. Venable on his return to Philadelphia, he thinking that as the agency had been joint, it was most proper the answer should be joint, and informing me that Mr. Venable had told him he would wait his return. I came to Philadelphia accordingly to bring the affair to a close, but on my arrival I found Mr. Venable had left the city for Virginia. Mr. Monroe reached Philadelphia according to his appointment, and the morning following wrote me the note number thirty-two.
While this note was on its way to my lodgings, I was on my way to his. I had a conversation with him from which we separated with a repetition of the assurance of the note. In the course of the interviews with Mr. Monroe, the equivoc in document number five a and the paper of January 2nd, 1793, under his signature, were noticed. I received the day following the letter number 33, to which I returned the answer number 34, accompanied with the letter number 35, which was succeeded by the letters number 36, 37, 38, 39, and 40. In due time, the sequel of the correspondence will appear. Though extremely disagreeable to me for very obvious reasons, I at length determined in order that no cloud whatever might be left on the affair to publish the documents which had been communicated to Messrs.
Monroe, Muhlenberg, and Venable, all of which will be seen in the appendix from No. The information from Klingman of the 2nd January 1793, to which the signature of Mr. Monroe is annexed, seems to require an observation or two in addition to what is contained in my letter to him, number 39. Klingman first suggests that he had been apprised of my vindication through Mr. Wolcott a day or two after he had been communicated. It did not occur to me to inquire of Mr. Wolcott on this point, and he being now absent from Philadelphia, I cannot do it at this moment. Though I can have no doubt of the friendly intention of Mr. Wolcott if the suggestion of Klingman in this particular be taken as true. Yet from the condition of secrecy which was annexed to my communication, there is the strongest reason to conclude it is not true.
If not true, there is besides but one of two solutions. Either that he obtained the information from one of the three gentlemen who made the inquiry, which would have been a very dishonorable act in the party, or that he conjectured what my defense was from what he before knew it truly could be. For there is the highest probability that through Reynolds and his wife, and as an accomplice, he was privy to the whole affair. This last method of accounting for his knowledge would be conclusive on the sincerity and genuineness of the defense. But the turn which Clingman gives to the matter must necessarily fall to the ground. It is that Mrs. Reynolds denied her amorous connection with me, and represented the suggestion of it as a mere contrivance between her husband and myself to cover me, alleging that there had been a fabrication of letters and receipts to countenance it.
The plain answer is that Mrs. Reynolds' own letters contradict absolutely this artful explanation of hers, if indeed she ever made it, of which Clingman's assertion is no evidence whatever. These letters are proved by the affidavit number forty-one, though it will easily be conceived that the proof of them was rendered no easy matter by a lapse of near five years. They show explicitly the connection with her, the discovery of it by her husband, and the pain she took to prolong it when I evidently wish to get rid of it. This cuts up by the root the pretense of a contrivance between the husband and myself to fabricate the evidences of it. The variety of shapes which this woman could assume was endless.
In a conversation between her and a gentleman whom I am not at liberty publicly to name, she made a voluntary confession of her belief and even knowledge that I was innocent of all that had been laid to my charge by Reynolds or any other person of her acquaintance, spoke of me in exalted terms of esteem and respect, declared in the most solemn manner her extreme unhappiness, lest I should suppose her accessory to the trouble which had been given me on that account, and expressed her fear that the resentment of Mr. Reynolds on a particular score might have urged him to improper lengths of revenge, appearing at the same time I'm extremely agitated and unhappy. With the gentleman who gives this information, I have never been in any relation- His name would evince that he is an impartial witness.
And though I am not permitted to make a public use of it, I am permitted to refer any gentleman to the perusal of his letter in the hands of William Bingham Esquire, who is also so obliging as to permit me to deposit with him for similar inspection all the original papers which are contained in the appendix to this narrative. The letter from the gentleman above alluded to has already been shown to Mr. Monroe. Let me now in the last place recur to some comments in which the hireling editors of the pamphlets No. 5 and 6 has thought fit to indulge himself. The first of them is that the soft language of one of my notes addressed to a man in the habit of threatening me with disgrace is incompatible with the idea of innocence.
The threats alluded to must be those of being able to hang the secretary of the treasury. How does it appear that Reynolds was in such a habit? No otherwise than by the declaration of Reynolds and Klingman. If the assertions of these men are to condemn me, there is an end of the question. There is no need by elaborate deduction from parts of their assertions to endeavor to establish what their assertions collectively As to the affair of threats, except those in Reynolds' letters respecting the connection with his wife, which it will be perceived were very gentle for the occasion, not the least idea of the sort ever reached me till after the imprisonment of Reynolds. Mr. Wolcott's certificate shows my conduct in that case.
Notwithstanding the powerful motives I may be presumed to have had to desire the liberation of Reynolds, on account of my situation with his wife, I cautioned Mr. Wolcott not to facilitate his liberation till the affair of the threat was satisfactorily cleaned up. The solemn denial of it in Reynolds' letter No. 42 was considered by Mr. Wolcott as sufficient. This is of further proof that though in respect to my situation with his wife I was somewhat in Reynolds' power, I was not disposed to make any improper concession to the apprehension of his resentment. As the threats intimated in his letters, the nature of the cause will show that the soft tone of my note was not only compatible with them, but a natural consequence of them.
But it is observed that the dread of the disclosure of an amorous connection was not a sufficient cause for my humility, and that I had nothing to lose as to my reputation for chastity concerning which the world had fixed a previous opinion. I shall not enter into the question what was the previous opinion entertained of me in this particular, nor how well-founded, if it was indeed such as it is represented to have been. It is sufficient to say that there is a wide difference between vague rumors and suspicions and the evidence of a positive fact. No man not indelicately unprincipled with the state of manners in this country would be willing to have a conjugal infidelity fixed upon him with positive certainty.
He would know that it would justly injure him with a considerable and respectable portion of the society, and especially no man tender of the happiness of an excellent wife could without extreme pain look forward to the affliction which she might endure from the disclosure, especially a public disclosure of the fact. Those best acquainted with the interior of my domestic life will best appreciate the force of such a consideration upon me. The truth was that in both relations and especially the last, I dreaded extremely a disclosure, and was willing to make large sacrifices to avoid it. It is true that from the acquiescence of Reynolds I had strong ties upon his secrecy, but how could I rely upon any tie upon so base a character?
How could I know but that from moment to moment he might at the expense of his own disgrace become the mercenary of a party with whom to blast my character in any way is a favorite object? Strong inferences are attempted to be drawn from the release of Klingman and Reynolds with the consent of the Treasury, from the want of communicativeness of Reynolds while in prison, from the subsequent disappearance of Reynolds and his wife, and from their not having been produced by me in order to be confronted at the time of the explanation. As to the first, it was emphatically the transaction of Mr. Wolcott, the them Comptroller of the Treasury, and was bottomed upon a very adequate motive, and one as appears from the document No.
1A, early contemplated in this light by that officer. It was certainly of more consequence to the public to detect and expel from the bosom of the Treasury Department an unfaithful clerk to prevent future and extensive mischief than to disgrace and punish two worthless individuals. Besides that, a powerful influence foreign to me was exerted to procure indulgence on them. That of Mr. Muhlenberg and Colonel Burr, that of Colonel Wadsworth, which was though insidiously placed to my account, was, to the best of my recollection, utterly unknown to me at the time, and, according to the confession of Mrs. Reynolds herself, was put in motion by her entreaty. Candid men will derive strong evidence of my innocence and delicacy from the reflection that under circumstances so peculiar, the culprits were compelled to give a real and substantial equivalent for the relief which they obtained from a department over which I presided.
The backwardness of Reynolds to enter into detail while in jail was an argument of nothing but that conscious of his inability to communicate any particulars which could be supported. He found it more convenient to deal in generals and to keep up appearances by giving promises for the future. As to the disappearance of the parties after the liberation, how am I answerable for it? Is it not presumable that the instance discovered at the Treasury was not the only offense of the kind of which they were guilty? After one detection, is it not very probable that Reynolds fled to avoid detection in other cases? But exclusive of this, it is known and might easily be proved that Reynolds was considerably in debt.
What more natural for him than to fly from his creditors after having been once exposed by confinement for such a crime? Moreover, atrocious as his conduct had been towards me, was it not natural for him to fear that my resentment might be excited at the discovery of it, and that it might have been deemed a sufficient reason for attracting the indulgence which was shown by withdrawing the prosecution and for recommencing it? One or all of these considerations will explain the disappearance of Reynolds without imputing it to me as a method of getting rid of a dangerous witness. That disappearance rendered it impracticable if it had been desired to bring him forward to be confronted. As to Klingman, it was not pretended that he knew anything of what was charged upon me otherwise than by the notes which he produced and the information of Reynolds and his wife.
As to Mrs. Reynolds, she, in fact, appears by Klingman's last story to have remained and to have been accessible through him by the gentleman who had undertaken the inquiry. If they supposed it necessary to the elucidation of the affair, why did they not bring her forward? There can be no doubt of the sufficiency of Clingman's influence for this purpose when it is understood that Mrs. Reynolds and he afterwards lived together as man and wife. But to what purpose the confronting? What would it have availed the elucidation of truth if Reynolds and his wife had impudently made allegations which I denied? Relative character and the written documents must still determine these could decide without it, and they were relied upon.
But could it be expected that I should so debase myself as to think it necessary to my vindication to be confronted with a person such as Reynolds? Could I have borne to suffer my veracity to be exposed to the humiliating competition? For what? Why it is said to tear up the last twig of jealousy. But when I knew that I possessed written documents which were decisive, how could I foresee that any twig of jealousy would remain? When the proofs I did produce to the gentlemen were admitted by them to be completely satisfactory, and by some of them to be more than sufficient, how could I dream of the expediency of producing more? How could I imagine that every twig of jealousy was not plucked up? If after the recent confessions of the gentlemen themselves it could be useful to fortify the proof of the full conviction my explanation had wrought, I might appeal to the total silence concerning this charge when at a subsequent period in the year 1793 there was such an active legislative persecution of me.
It might not even perhaps be difficult to establish that it came under the eye of Mr. Giles and that he discarded it as the plain case of a private amour unconnected with anything that was the proper subject of a public attack. Thus has my desire to destroy this slander completely led me to a more copious and particular examination of it that I am sure was necessary. The bare perusal of the letters from Reynolds and his wife is sufficient to convince my greatest enemy that there is nothing worse in the affair than an irregular and indelicate amour. For this, I bow to the just censure which it merits. I have paid pretty severely for the folly and can never recollect it without disgust and self-condemnation.
It might seem affectation to say more. To unfold more clearly the malicious intent by which the present revival of the affair must have been influenced, I shall annex an affidavit of Mr. Webster, tending to confirm my declaration of the utter falsehood of the assertion that a menace of publishing the papers which had been published had arrested the progress of an attempt to hold me up as a candidate for the office of President. Does this editor imagine that he will escape the just odium which awaits him by the miserable stutterfuge of saying that he had the information from a respectable citizen of New York? Till he names the author, the inevitable inference must be that he has fabricated the tale.
Alexander Hamilton, Philip End of the Reynolds pamphlet.
-
14 14 - The Seagull, from Birds in the Calendar, August 11:57
Birds in the Calendar by F.G. Aflalo. This is LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Pradeep Singh Ehdi. August, The Seagull. So glorious is the flight of the seagull that it tempts us to fling aside the dry-as-dust theories of mechanism of flexed wings, coefficient of air resistance, And all the abracadabra of the mathematical biologist. And just to give thanks for a sight so inspiring is that of girls, ringing high in the eye of the wind over hissing comb birds that break on sloping beaches or around jagged rocks. These birds are one with the sea, knowing no fear of that protean monster which, since Earth's beginning, has always, with its unfathomable mystery, Its insatiable cruelty, its tremendous strength, been a source of terror to the land animals that dwell inside of it.
Yet the gulls sit on the curling rollers, as much at their ease as swimmers in a pond, and give an impression of unconscious courage very remarkable in creatures that seem so frail. Hunger may drive them inland, or instincts equally irresistible at the breeding season, but never the worst gale that lashes the sea to fury. For they derret in its hour of rage as little as on still summer nights, when in their hundreds they fly off the land to roost on the water outside the headlands. It is curious that there should be no mention of them in the sacred writings. We read of quails coming in from the sea, likewise of four great beasts, but of sea-fall never a word, though one sees them in abundance on the coast near Jaffa.
And the Hebrew writers might have been expected to weave them into the rich fabric of their poetic imagery, as they did the pelican, the eagle, and the other birds less familiar. Although seagulls have of late years been increasingly in evidence beside the bridges of London, they are still, to the majority of folk living far in land, symbolical of the August holiday at the cost. And their splendid flight and raucous cries are among the most enduring memories of that yearly escape from the smoke of cities. The voice of girls can, with difficulty, be regarded as musical. Yet those of us who live the year round by the sea find their plaintive mewing as nicely tuned to that wild environment as the amorous gurgling of nightingale to moonlit words in May.
Their voice may have no great range, but at any rate it is not lacking in variety, suggesting to the playful imagination, laughter, tears, and other human moods to which they are in all probability strangers. The curious similarity between the note of a seagull and the whining of a cat, bereft of her kittens, is very striking, and was on one occasion the cause of my being taken in by one of these birds, in a deep and beautiful backwater of the sea of Marmora. Beside which I spent one pleasant summer. In this particular gulf, at the head of which stands the ancient town of Ismint, gulfs, though plentiful in the open sea, are rarely in evidence, being replaced by herons and pelicans. I had not, therefore, set eyes on a seagull for many weeks, when early one morning I heard from the farther side of a wooded headland a new note suggestive of a wildcat or possibly a lynx.
My Greek servant tried in his patwa to explain the unseen honour of the mysterious voice, but it was only when a small gull suddenly came pendling around the corner that I realised my mistake. In addition to being at home on the seashore, and particularly in estuaries, and where the coast is rocky, Gulls are a familiar sight in the wake of seamers at the beginning and ending of the voyage, as well as following the plow and nesting in the vicinity of inland mures and marshes. The black-headed kind is peculiarly given to bringing up its family far from the sea, just as the salmon ascends our rivers for the same purpose. It is not perhaps a very loving parent, seeing that the mortality among young girls, many of which show signs of rough treatment by their elders, is unusually great.
On most lakes rich in fish, these birds have long established themselves, and they were, I remember, as familiar at Geneva and New Shuttle, as along the shores of Lake Tahoe in the Californian Sierra, itself 200 miles from the Pacific and more than a mile above sea level. Gulls also follow the plough in hordes. Not always to the complete satisfaction of the farmer, who is not unreasonably skeptical when told that they seek wireworms only and have no taste for grain. Unfortunately, the ordinary scray crow has no terror for them, and I recollect in the neighborhood of Maryport seeing an immense number of girls turning up the soil in close proximity to several crows that dangling from gibbers effectually kept all black brooders away.
Young girls are, to the careless eye, apt to look larger than their parents, an illusion possibly due to the optical effect of their dappled plumage, and few people unfamiliar with these birds in their succeeding molds readily believe that the dark birds are younger than the white. Down in little Cornish harbors, I have sometimes forged these young birds turned to good account by their lazy elders, who call them to the feast. Whenever the ebbing tide uncovers a heap of dead pilkets laying in three or four feet of water and then pounce on them the moment they come to the surface with their booty. The fact is that girls are not expert divers. The comrade and puffin and guillemot can vanish at the flash of a gun, reappearing far from where they were last seen, and can pursue and catch some of the swiftest fishes underwater.
Some girls, however, are able to plunge farther below the surface than others, and the little Kitty Wack is perhaps the most expert diver of them all, though in no sense at home underwater like the Shag. I have often, when at anchor 10 or 15 miles from the land, and attended by the usual convoy of seabirds that invariably gathered round fishing boats, amused myself by throwing scraps of fish to them and watching the gulls do their best to plunge below the surface when some coveted morsel was going down into the depths. And now and again a little Roman-nosed puffin would dive headlong and snatch their prize from under the gulls' eyes. Most of the birds were fearless enough. Only an occasional saddlebag, the greater black-backed girl of the textbooks, knowing the hand of man to be against it for its raids on game and poultry, would keep at a respectful distance.
Considered economically, the smaller girls at any rate have more friends than enemies, and they owe most of the latter not so much to their appetites, which set more stored by offal and carrion than by anything of greater value as to their exceedingly dirty habits. These unclean fowl are in fact anything but welcome in harbours, given over in summer to smart yachting craft. And I remember how at Avalon, the port of Santa Catalina Island, various devices were employed to prevent them alighting. Boats at the moorings were festooned with strips of bunting, which apparently had the requisite effect, and the railings of the club were protected by a formidable armour of nails. On the credit side of their account with ourselves, seagulls are admittedly assiduous scavengers, and their service in keeping little tidal harbour clear of decaying fish, which if left to accumulate would speedily breed pestilence, cannot be overrated.
The fishermen, though they rarely molest them, do not always refer to the birds with the gratitude that might be expected. Yet they are still further in their debt. Being often apprised by their movement of the whereabouts of McCarroll and Pilkard Shoals, and in thick weather getting many a friendly warning of the whereabouts of outlying rogues from the horse crisis of the girls that have their Seagulls are not commonly made pet-of, the nearest approach to such adoption being an occasional pinion individual enjoying qualified liberty in a backyard. Their want of popularity is easily understood, since they lack the music of canary and the mimicry of parrots. That they are, however, capable of appreciating kindness has been demonstrated by many anecdotes.
The revered H.A. Macpherson used to tell a story of how a young girl, found with a broken ring by the children of some Milo-Vague crofters, was nursed back to health by them until it eventually flew away. Not long after it had gone, one of the children was lost on the hillside, and the girl, flying overhead, recognized one of its old playmates, and hovered so as to attract the attention of the child. Then, on being cold, the bird settled and roosted on the ground beside him. And even more remarkable stories told of a girl taken from the nest on the coast of County Cork and brought up by hand until, in the following spring, it flew away in the company of some others of its kind and passed over the garden in which it had its liberty.
The bird's owner reasonably concluded that he had seen the last of his prodigy. And great was his astonishment when, in the first October gale, not only did the visitor return, tapping at the dining room window for admission, On either side of the gulls, and closely associated with them in habits and in structure, is a group of birds equally characteristic of the open coast, the skuas and terns. The skuas, darker and more courageous birds, are familiar to those who spend their august holiday sea fishing near the land's end. Where particularly on days when the east wind brings the gannets and proposes close and short. The great scuwa may be seen at its favourite game of swooping on the gulls and making them disgorged or drop their lawns or pilkard, which the bird usually retrieves before it reaches the water.
This act of piracy has earned for the scuwas its West Country sobriquet of Jack Harry, and against so fear an onslaught, even the largest gull, Though actually of heavier build than its triant, has no chance and seldom indeed seems to offer the feeblest resistance. These scuas rob their neighbours in every latitude, and even in the Antarctic one kind, closely related to our own, makes havoc among the penguins. An episode described by the late Dr. Wilson, one of the heroes of ill-fated Scott expedition. Far more pleasing to the eye are the grateful little terns, or sea swallows, fairy-like creatures with red legs and bill, long-pointed wings and deeply forked tails, which skim the surface of the sea or hawk over the shallows of trot streams in search of dragonflies or small fish.
It is not a very rare experience for the trot fisherman to hook a swallow which may happen to dash by at the moment of casting. But a much more unusual occurrence was that of a turn on a well-known pool of the spey, actually mistaking a salmon fly for a small fish and swooping on it, only to get firmly hooked by the bill. Fortunately for the two venturesome turn, the fisherman was a lover of birds, and he managed with some difficulty to reel it in gently, after which it was released, none the worse for its mistake.
-
15 15 - Some Old-Time Old-World Librarians (1914) 44:06
Some Old-Time Old-World Librarians, 1914, by Theodore Wesley Koch. Mr.
Herbert Putnam, in an address before the Ottawa meeting of the American Library Association, expressed a hope for a recognition, a re-cognition, in our library organization, of that type which gave personality to the old-time libraries. However indifferent the old-time librarians may have been, or might be today, to the mere mechanism in our modern library organization, Mr. Putnam said, They succeeded in producing an atmosphere which had a potency of its own. It was that which at once took the visitor out of himself, away from affairs, and gave him touch with a different world, a sense of different values. Does he not miss it now? I think he does. and that, however he may respect the efficiency of the modern librarian as administrator, his really affectionate admiration turns back to the librarian of the old school, whose soul was lifted above mere administration, or the method of the moment, or the manner of insistent service, and whose passionate regard was rather for the insight of a book than the outside of a reader.
Even the librarian, to whom a reader seemed indeed but an interruption to an abstraction that was privileged. The prevailing ideas concerning librarianship have changed so radically within the last generation or two that it may be worthwhile to study a few types of the old-fashioned librarian. The modern librarian has been so concerned with schemes of classification, card catalogues, and new methods of housing the present-day avalanche of books, that he has not had time to familiarize himself with his forebears. I must resist the temptation I have a question to go back to antiquity as a starting point for our study, and simply allow myself one illustration to show that the ancients knew a good librarian when they saw him.
For the library of Pergamos, Umenes II tried to secure the services of Aristophanes of Byzantium, librarian to Ptolemy V. To assure his remaining in Alexandria, the librarian was cast in prison, a simple device for keeping an efficient worker when he had a call elsewhere. But in this paper we can concern ourselves only with librarians who have come on to this scene since the invention of printing. In 1475, Pope Sixtus IV made Platina librarian of the newly organized Vatican Library. Platina's account book has been preserved and published, and from this can be seen the varied nature of his duties. The librarian had to attend to the purchase of books, send out copyists, procure skins for binding, and supervise the making of books, as well as their use.
He had charge of the reading-room, in which the books were chained to the desks, and was allowed discretionary power in the lending of books to high officials of the church, To scholars, and even to strangers sojourning in Rome. His account-book shows that he looked very carefully after the comfort of the readers, and that he knew the men whom he could trust. Platina and his three pages slept in a room adjoining the library, and they were diligent in the use of juniper in fumigating the rooms, in sweeping the library with brooms, and dusting the books with fox-tails. Montaigne, in the journal of his travels in Italy, in 1581, says that he inspected the Vatican Library without any difficulty. Indeed, he adds, anyone may visit it, and make what extracts he likes.
It is open almost every morning. I was taken to every part thereof by a gentleman who invited me to make use of it as often as I might desire. De Brosse, in his Letters on Italy, published at the end of the 18th century, in writing of the Vatican Library, says that, as Cardinal Quereni, the librarian, is also Bishop of Brescia, he is always away in his diocese. His portrait in the antechamber has to do duty instead. The copyists, he added, are ignorant and dear. The most picturesque figure in the annals of Italian librarianship is undoubtedly Antonio Maglia Bresci. While his official position as librarian to Cosmo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, gave him considerable prominence, he is remembered more especially for his personal characteristics and his vast store of self-acquired learning.
He has been described as a literary glutton. and the most rational of bibliomaniacs, inasmuch as he read everything he bought. His own library consisted of 40,000 books and 10,000 manuscripts. His house literally overflowed with books. The stairways were lined with them, and they even filled the front porch. Many stories are told of his marvelous memory that was like wax to receive and marble to retain. One of the best known of these stories is that when Cosmo asked him for an extremely rare book, he replied, Signor, there is but one copy of that book in the world. It is in the Grand Signor's Library at Constantinople, and is the Eleventh book in the Second Shelf on the right, and as you go in.
In worldly matters, Magliabeschi was extremely negligent. He even forgot to draw his salary for over a year. He wore his clothes until they fell from him, and thought it a great waste of time to undress at night, life being so short and books so plentiful. He welcomed all inquiring scholars, provided they did not disturb him while at work. He had a hearty dislike for the Jesuits, One day, in pointing out the Palazzo di Cade to a stranger, he said, Here the new birth of learning took place, and then, turning to the College of Jesuits, there they have come back to bury it. The Jesuits, on hearing of this, characterized him rather cruelly as, Es doctor inter bibliocarios, sed bibliocarios inter doctores.
Magliabeschi rejoined with this sally. Some say that, after all, his learning is not so great, the learned allow him but librarian state, and yet, in sober truth it must be said, all go to him for flour to make their bread. Unlike some scholarly librarians of the past, ever watchful and jealous of manuscript material, which they themselves plan to edit, Isaac Casabon, the humanist, was only anxious to read the manuscripts under his charge. For the most part, he was ready to leave the printing to others. Casabon, too poor to buy books of his own, said of his father-in-law, Henri Estienne, who jealously kept him from gaining access to his books and manuscripts, that he guarded them as griffins in India do their gold.
When Casabon visited the library of the learned historian Dethoux, of which he had heard so much, he found it far surpassed his expectations, and his heart sank at the thought of the little that he knew. In 1604, Casabon was appointed sub-librarian in the royal library under Dethoux, with the title Garde de la Librarie du Roi. His years there were the happiest of his life. His ideal was to read from early morning till late at night. In his ephemerides, a diary in which he recited the progress of his studies day by day, there are such entries as, To-day I got six hours for study. When shall I get my whole day? And again, this morning, not to my books till seven o'clock, or after, alas, me, and after that the whole morning lost, nay, the whole day.
When he was able to have a whole day for his studies, he gratefully recorded the fact in his diary in the words, Wodier-Vixi. Frequently the only entry is, My daily task, Thanks be to God. Not knowing how long he should remain in Paris, he early resolved to read all the books in the Royal Library, which he might not be able to find elsewhere. Consequently, he did nothing in the way of classifying or cataloguing the material under his charge. When anyone asked for a particular book, he tried to find it. In 1608, four years after Casabon entered the library, Herschel wrote him asking whether the library contained any manuscripts of Arianus. Casabon replied that he did not know, but would look, and upon searching found two.
In reply to Scaliger's request for manuscript fragments of a chronological nature, he says that he will have a thorough search made through all the cases. No wonder that Mark Pattison, in his Life of Casaubon, said that the librarian who reads is lost. Casaubon was forcibly reminded that he was the king's librarian, and as such shared the obligations which the court imposed on all its entourage. He was not permitted, while librarian, to write a critical review of the annals of Baronius for fear of offending the church, and Roman influence was paramount at the French court. When Casabon visited Oxford, he was hospitably entertained, but he succeeded in reserving many hours of each day for his studies in the Bodleian, an overindulgence for which he paid the penalty during the second week in a sudden sense of dizziness, which seized him one day while on his way to the library.
"'None of the colleges have attracted me so much as the Bodleian, the work rather for a king than for a private man,' said Casabon. He describes his own feelings when he writes Soumès, who was reveling in the treasures of the Palatine, that he must be suffering the torments of Tantalus, not being able to read all the books at once. A younger contemporary of Casabon, Gabriel Naudet, by name, was destined to build up for Cardinal Mazarin a library which outstripped the one belonging to the king. In 1642, Naudet was invited to return to his native city of Paris, and began the task of laying the foundations of a new public library. Naudet had previously catalogued the Library of Descourdes, a canon of Limoges, who had died, leaving his collection of six thousand volumes to be sold, and Naudet prevailed upon Mazarin to purchase the entire lot.
Then all the bookshops of Paris and all the waste-paper dealers were canvassed for possible treasures. Naudet had been at his task but little more than a year, when there was opened in the Mazarin Palace a public library larger than anything that had been seen before in the French capital. The reading-room was open once a week on Thursdays from eight until eleven, and from two until five. Nodet himself counted as many as from 80 to 100 readers, among whom were such scholars as Hugo Grotias, Obrey, the historian, and René Moreau, professor of medicine at the University of Paris. Before long, the number of volumes reached the respectable total of twelve thousand, thus exceeding the royal collection at that time by approximately two thousand volumes.
Naudet was still far from satisfied, and undertook a book-hunting journey in Flanders, which brought such good results that in April 1645 he went to Italy in search of additional volumes. This last trip brought into the library fourteen thousand An Italian friend, Vittorio di Rosse, who met him in Rome on this trip, has left an account of Nodet's method of book buying. According to this writer, Nodet would enter a bookshop with a foot-rule in hand, and, without going too much into details about the titles, would ask the bookseller to name a price for certain piles of books. The bookseller, taken aback by the sudden influx of wholesale business, would name a price at random. Which Nodet would beat down by degrees, and eventually buy in the books at such a low figure that the bookseller, seeing too late how he had been duped, would regret that he had not sold the lot to a grocer or a butterman, who would surely have given him a larger sum for so much paper.
After a visit from Nodet, the bookshops, says de Rossi, appeared to have been swept by a hurricane, rather than visited by a bibliophile, and when one met him with a With a smile of satisfaction beaming through the dust and cobwebs that covered him, his lean figure swelled by the volumes which filled his pockets, one might readily conjecture that he had just come from a particularly satisfactory victory. Nodet claimed that in book collecting, as in love and war, all means were fair. He was famous for his ability in driving a hard bargain. There is on record, however, one instance of his having been outwitted in the buying of a book, but it will not be laid to his discredit when it is known that the other party to the transaction was a Scotchman.
Perhaps the most extraordinary librarianship was that enjoyed by Diderot, who, about 1765, decided to sell his library in order to provide a dowry for his daughter. The Empress Catherine of Russia heard through Grimm of the straits to which Diderot had been reduced, and instructed her agent to buy in the library at the owner's valuation. In this way, Diderot received not only 16,000 livres, but he was graciously requested to consider himself the librarian of the new purchase at a salary of 1,000 livres a year. Moreover, and this begins to sound like a fairy tale, Diderot was paid the salary for fifty years in advance. Needless to say, this was only a pension in disguise. Catherine wrote to Madame du Defens, I should never have expected that the purchase of a library would bring me so many fine compliments.
All the world is be praising me about M. Diderot's library. But now confess, you to whom humanity is indebted for the strong support that you have given to innocence and virtue in the person of Calais, that it would have been cruel and unjust to separate a student from his books. Lessing may be taken to typify one class of old-fashioned librarians, the men of letters who regarded an appointment to a library position as a sinecure. Installed as librarian of the Duckel Library at Wolfenbüde, Lessing took advantage of the privilege of the librarian of his day by substituting the writing of books for the less attractive duty of classifying and cataloguing them. His successor in office, Langer, was very bitter in his criticism of Lessing's administration, claiming that he had left much of his work undone.
He even offered a reward to anyone who could show him a trace of Lessing's handwriting in the library. To this day, the only scrap of it is a note attached to a collection of engravings. Geisler wrote Langer in 1781, saying that, Lessing left you far too much to do was natural, because he was a genius, and this class seldom do their duty, but always follow their inclinations. While Lessing was confessedly weak in matters of routine, he was strong where the general welfare of the library was concerned. He proposed a good plan for disposing of duplicates and filling the gaps in the library. It was also specified that to the mere mechanical duties the librarian was to attend to just as much or just as little as he pleased.
For these he was to have two assistants and a man-servant. His main function would be to investigate thoroughly the library and to bring to light its chief treasures. This last was Lessing's principal concern. A catalogue of treasures, said he, is good enough, but it is no new treasure, which is a point hardly conceded by the librarian of today, who is in the midst of making over an old card catalogue. So much for the old-fashioned librarian on the continent. Let us now look at a few of his class in Great Britain, and gather some illustrations of early ideas of library management in that country. The Bishop of Worcester in 1464 stipulated that his librarian be a graduate in theology and a good preacher.
And in addition, he was expected to explain hard passages in the Bible, make lists of books in his keeping, and take an inventory of the library each year on the Friday after the Feast of Relics. Sir Thomas Bodley, in the first draft of the statutes which he drew up for the administration of the library founded by him, explicitly states that the keeper shall open and close the library doors at certain hours, varying with the season, and that at these prescribed hours he shall cause to be rung the warning bell of his ingress and egress, that men may shun the discommodities of repairing thither over soon, or or abiding there too long, which the difference of clocks may occasion very often to the prejudice and hindrance of himself as well as others.
The keeper is to see that a register of gifts shall be kept, written with a special, fair, and pleasing hand, and withal to be exposed, where it may be still in sight, for every man to view, as an eminent and endless token of our thankful acceptation of whatsoever hath been given, and as an excellent inducement for posterity, to imitate these former good examples. The founder ruled that before any graduate or any person of note would be given the privilege of the Bodleian Library, he should appear before the vice-chancellor or his substitute, and there, in the presence of the library-keeper, he should take the oath of fidelity to the library, which was to be administered with these words. You shall promise and swear in the presence of Almighty God, that whensoever you shall repair to the public library of this university, you will conform yourself to study with modesty and silence, and use both the books and everything appertaining to their furniture with a careful respect to their longest conservation, and that neither yourself in person, nor any other whatsoever, by your procurement or privity, shall either openly or underhand.
And, by way of embezzling, changing, raising, defacing, tearing, cutting, noting, interlining, or by voluntary corrupting, blotting, blurring, or any other manner of mangling or misusing any one or more of the set books, either wholly or in part, make any alteration. But shall hinder and impeach, as much as lieth in you, all and every such offender or offenders, by detecting their demeanour unto the vice-chancellor, or to his deputy then in place, within the next three days after it shall come to your knowledge. So help you God, by Christ's merits, according to the doctrine of his holy evangelists. King James I was so appreciative of the work of Bodley that he granted letters patent the year after the library was opened, naming the library after the founder, whom he later knighted, and whose name, said he, should have been not Bodley, but Godley.
Richard Bentley was an intellectual prodigy who in early life fell heir to the cloak of librarianship. He coupled with his genius for scholarship a large enthusiasm for the advancement of learnings, and with a daring almost insolent, he shook off the clamors of the half-learned, who are always noisy against their betters. This ever pugnacious determination to carry all projects through a maze of falsities is seen even in his career as royal librarian. At thirty-one, already well on the highway of scholarly recognition, he was induced to take the vacant office of King's librarian. His first step was characteristic. To such good use did he put the few months left before the evaded licensing act expired that the significant The significant record remains that he exacted near a thousand volumes.
Bentley's next step was to endeavor to secure some vacant rooms to relieve the cramped condition of his library at St. James's Palace. The Duke of Marlborough, his neighbor across the hall, with obliging diplomacy, undertook to plead his cause, with the result that the future hero of Blenheim got the closets for himself. Not disheartened by this perfidy, the young librarian, after declaring that the Royal Library was not fit to be seen, started on what Lord Evelyn warmly called his glorious enterprise of building a new library. The Treasury consented to the proposal, but the bill to Parliament was shelved, owing to the press of public business. In the meantime, Bentley took the library's chief treasure, the Alexandrine manuscript of the Greek Bible, to his own rooms in St.
James's Palace in order that persons might see it without seeing the library, thereby establishing a new and original precedent in library economy. Out of one incident in his early tenure of office grew a quarrel resulting in several curiosities of literature and one masterpiece of scientific criticism. Dr. Aldrich, the dean of Christchurch, had induced a young Oxford man, the Honorable Charles Boyle, to edit the Epistles of Phalaris, and in preparing his work for the printer, Boyle desired to consult a manuscript in the King's Library. Interestingly, he wrote to a bookseller in London asking him to have someone collate it for him. When Bentley took charge of the library in May 1694, he granted the loan of the manuscript for the purpose, and allowed ample time for the work to be done.
But the collator failed to complete his task before the expiration of the time of the loan. The bookseller then very unfairly represented to Boyle that Bentley had acted churlishly in the matter, and Boyle, without verifying the story, said in his preface, "'I have also procured a I was in a collation as far as Epistle No. 40 of a manuscript in the Royal Library. The librarian, with that courtesy which distinguishes him, refused me the further use of it. Bentley happened to see an early presentation copy before the bulk of the edition was issued, and he at once wrote to Broyle, saying that the statement was incorrect, and gave him the true facts. Broyle sent an evasive reply, but let the statement stand as written.
While Bentley was urged to refute the slander, he remained silent. Out of a natural aversion to all quarrels and broils, he wrote, with what later seemed refined irony, And out of regard to the editor himself, I resolved to take no notice of it but to let the matter drop. A few years later, Bentley reviewed Boyle's work in a way that incited Boyle, with the aid of half a dozen Oxford wits, to publish the book popularly known as Boyle against Bentley, in which insults were heaped upon the Royal Librarian. In 1699, Bentley was appointed headmaster of Trinity College, Cambridge, and though still continuing to hold the office of King's Librarian, he removed to Cambridge. Here he continued the policy displayed in connection with the Alexandrine manuscript.
When Dr. Conyers Middleton became librarian of Trinity College, he published a plan for the classification of the books, and took occasion to attack Bentley for retaining some manuscripts, including the precious Codex Bezae, in his own house. But Bentley was always able to fight his own battles, and he inaugurated, by what his enemies were pleased to call, His insolent erudition, that famous series of bitter college fews which ended only with the death of their vigorous and valiant instigator. Even the admiring, kindly Pepys was brought to admit that our friend's learning wants a little filing, while Bishop Stillingfleet was heard to agree that did his friend Richard but possess the gift of humility, he would indeed be the most extraordinary man in Europe.
The name of Bentley brings to mind that of a later classical scholar who was an interesting misfit in the library world of a century ago, Richard Porson. His professorship of Greek at Cambridge paid only forty pounds a year, and so he welcomed the additional appointment of librarian to the newly founded London Institution in 1806, at a salary of two hundred pounds per year, with a suite of apartments thrown in. I am sincerely rejoiced, wrote Richard Sharp, one of the electors, in notifying Porson of the appointment, in the prospect of those benefits which the institution is likely to derive from your reputation and talents, and of the comforts which I hope that you will find in your connection with us.
To-day, the only existing indications of his tenure of office are the acquisition during his time of some Greek and Latin classics, and some manuscript notes in a few volumes in the library. He made no attempt to catalogue the books. The managers of the institution wrote him to the effect that they only knew him to be their librarian by seeing his name attached to the receipts for his salary. He reciprocated by characterizing the managers as mercantile and mean beyond merchandise and meanness. While Porson had three essentials of librarianship, a good memory, a knowledge of books, and imagination, and was always willing to dispense information to such as called upon him for it, yet he was lacking in methodical attention to work.
Dr. Parr once remarked that if the Duke of Brunswick at the head of his Huns and Vandals were to burn every book of every library in Cambridge, Porson, being, as Longinus was said to be, a living library, would make the university here without books more than they are likely to read with books. In 1752, David Hume was appointed librarian of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. Hume described it as a petty office of forty or fifty guineas a year, and again as a genteel office. He accepted it because it gave him the command of a large library. A member of the faculty was a candidate at the same time, but Hume got the majority of votes. Then, says Hume, came the violent cry of deism, atheism, and skepticism.
Twas represented that my election would be giving the sanction of the greatest and most learned body in this country to my profane and irreligious principles. The ladies sided with Hume, and one of them broke with her lover, because he voted against the philosopher-historian. After he had been in office two years, Hume was censured by three of the curators of the library for buying the Comte of La Fontaine, Boussy-Raboutin's Histoire amoureuse de Gaulle, and Crebillon's Le Que Moi, deemed indecent and unworthy of a place in a learned library. The absurdity of the resolution of censure is shown by the fact that these works are now in almost every library which makes any pretension of being classed among the learned.
Hume wrote to Lord Advocate Dundas, claiming that in his opinion, the impropriety did not matter if it were executed with decency and ingenuity. Being equally unwilling to lose the use of the books and to bear an indignity, I retained the office, but have given Blacklock, our blind poet, a bond of annuity for the salary. I have now put it out of these malicious fellows' power to offer me any indignity, while my motive for remaining in this office is so apparent. The assistant librarian, Goodall, who was seldom sober, was busied with his Vindication of Mary, Queen of Scots, while Hume was writing his history of England, and the library was left to run itself. The director of the British Museum formerly had only the title of principal librarian, which was, to a certain extent, A misnomer, as he has always had as much to do with the antiquities as with the books.
To him is entrusted the custody of the entire museum, his duty being to look after the welfare of the whole institution, and to see that the respective duties of the various officers and subordinates are properly performed. The principal librarian, as housekeeper, had also the nomination of the housemaids until the doubtful privilege passed in Sir Henry Ellis's day to the principal trustees. The head of each department is called its keeper. And in most apartments there is also an assistant keeper. These titles are reminiscent of the prime duty of the old-time librarian. One of them once consulted the trustees on the question of the acceptance by the museum of a certain anti-Christian manuscript by a learned Jew, which he argued would not be pernicious, as the ignorant would not read it.
and the souls of the learned were of little importance. Dr. Templeman, the first superintendent of the reading-room, seems to have found his duties rather onerous. After occupying the position eight months, he asked to be relieved from what he considers the excessive attendance of six hours each day, as this is more than he is able to bear. Under date of March 18th, 1760, it is recorded that, last Tuesday, no company coming to the reading-room, Dr. Templeman ventured to go away about two o'clock. Twenty readers per month during the first few months was a high average, and after the novelty had worn off, the average dropped to ten or twelve. The early librarians at the British Museum were little more than guides appointed to show visitors around the institution.
In 1802, three attendants were appointed to relieve the under and assistant librarians from the daily duty of showing the museum, and they were given an increase in pay. As late as 1837, no less a person than the Rev. Henry Francis Carey, keeper of printed books, gave poor health as an argument for his promotion to the principal librarianship, which, as he said, would give him less to do. Sir Henry Ellis, when he was principal librarian, defended the closing of the museum for three weeks each autumn, and argued that if that were not done, the place would become unwholesome, and that to open it during the Easter holidays would be dangerous, as the most mischievous portion of the population is abroad and about at such a time.
He further argued for the closing of the institution on public holidays, on the ground that people of a higher grade would hardly wish to come to the museum at the same time when sailors from the dockyards and the girls whom they might bring with them. From this it can be clearly seen that he was not in touch with the growing liberality in the administration of public institutions and the influx of democratic ideas. In the opinion of many, Modern librarianship begins with Sir Anthony Panizzi's administration of the British Museum. An Italian carbonaro, under indictment for the publication of a pamphlet attacking the judicial system of Modena, he escaped to London, where, in 1831, he had an opportunity to enter the service of the museum.
The administration was then at its lowest ebb. The Elgin marbles and the King's library had just been acquired, but the regime was antiquated and the policy very narrow. Panizzi was put to work at cataloguing the pamphlets in the King's library. Owing to dissatisfaction with the progress of the subject catalog, the trustees, in 1834, outlined a plan for an alphabetical catalogue. The plan was an unsatisfactory one, but Panizzi was put in charge of the work. As he did more work than any two of his colleagues, the trustees raised his salary, and when there was an investigation of the administration of the British Museum, it was Panizzi who contributed the most important evidence. Valuable reforms were introduced, and Panizzi became a keeper of printed books in 1837.
This appointment brought out a certain British anti-foreign prejudice against Panizzi, which pursued him throughout his official career. There were meetings held to arouse sentiment against the promotion of this foreigner, and a speaker on one of these occasions made an open statement that Panizzi had been seen on the streets of London selling white mice. At the time of his appointment, the collections were just being removed from Montague House to the new quarters. Serious attempts were being made to fill the gaps in the collection, and the catalogue was being attacked in real earnest. The transfer of the collection was accomplished with remarkable expedition, but the progress of the catalogue was less satisfactory.
The responsibility for accepting or rejecting the supervision of this work was left by the The trustees were sent to Panizzi, and with his usual courage he decided to undertake the task. With the assistance of Jones, Watts, and others, he framed a set of catalogue rules which in many respects have never been superseded. An insufficient staff and an unfortunate decision of the trustees overruling Panizzi's advice to proceed in strict alphabetical order occasioned a good deal of trouble and criticism. The attempt to print one portion of the catalogue while another part was in preparation before it had been definitely decided as to what the main entry for many items would be, was responsible for the breakdown of the scheme.
After the publication of one volume in 1841, the decision to print the catalogue was abandoned, and Panizzi persuaded the trustees to engage an efficient staff of transcribers to copy the titles on slips, and he was thus enabled to put before the public a plan for a comprehensive catalogue. He failed to see the advantage of a printed catalogue over the slip catalogue, and was more concerned in supplying the deficiencies of the library, a task in which he had no rivals. By submitting a list of the needs in nearly every branch of literature, he procured, in 1845, an annual grant of £10,000, and through the judicious administration of this fund, the museum rose in rank from the sixth or seventh to the second The second, if not the first place, among the libraries of the world.
In 1848, dissatisfaction with conditions in the museum, due to lack of space, was so great that a royal commission of inquiry was instituted, and as a result of Panizzi's success, the administration of the museum was put into his hands. In temperament, Panizzi was strong and masterful, but his nature was warm and generous. He governed his library as his friend Cavour governed his country. said Dr. Garnett, perfecting its internal organization with one hand while he extended its frontiers with the other. When traveling abroad, he always rushed to visit the chief libraries first. At Bologna he found a manuscript catalogue so carefully made that he at once asked whose work it was, and when told that it had all been done by one man who had written every title with his own hand, Panizzi insisted upon seeing him.
A tall, thin-faced, threadbare individual appeared, whom Panizzi plied with questions, and then, to the astonishment of the attendants, Panizzi, in an outburst of Italian enthusiasm, hugged and kissed the timid cataloger on both cheeks. Panizzi was one of the most conscientious of officials, and was rarely absent from his post. Sidney Smith wrote him several times, inviting him to dinner on a certain date. Receiving no answer, the wit wrote later, I concluded you were dead, and I invited your executors. News, however, came that you were out of town. I should as soon have thought of St. Paul's or the monument being out of town, but as it was positively asserted, I have filled up your place. Next to Panizzi, the most attractive personality in the annals of the British Museum, to us at least, is Richard Garnett.
Like another native of Litchfield, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Garnet will be remembered more for what he was than for what he wrote. To carry the comparison still further, both were interpreters and left volumes of critical biography. Both were poets of no mean order. Both were storytellers and entertainers of repute, famed alike for their friendships, their love of learning, and their erudition. While Dr. Johnson's most enduring monument is his famous dictionary, Dr. Garnett left behind a printed catalogue of the British Museum, containing four and a half million entries, thereby earning the gratitude of scholars throughout the world. The British public never quite forgave Panizzi for claiming that a printed catalogue of their national library was too big a task to undertake.
Richard Garnett may be said to have spent his whole life in the British Museum. His father was an assistant keeper, and at the age of sixteen, the young man was made an assistant in the printed-book department. Promotions came rapidly until, in 1875, he was made assistant keeper and superintendent of the reading room. Garnett's work as placer or classifier, combined with his rare memory, gave him a remarkable command of the resources of the library. There seemed to be nothing that he had not read, and few subjects that he had not studied intimately. Few men of his time knew both the inside and outside of books as he did. Whatever the subject, he gave the impression that his knowledge of it was fresh and waiting for use.
Only one fall from grace is recorded. Mrs. Garnett had brought home, after a country holiday, what she believed to be a squirrel's nest, which she placed on the drawing-room table to show her friends. A dispute arose as to whether squirrels made nests. Mrs. Garnett appealed to her husband. "'Richard, do squirrels build nests?' He hesitated, then replied, "'I really do not know.' "'I do not think so. I must look it up.' Dr. Garnett was so endowed with a sense of good humor that he was never perturbed by the chronic fussers who frequented the place. A blank book in which the public can jot down suggestions for the improvement of the service, or of titles recommended for purchase, has for years been found to ease the public mind.
The authorities make a practice of entering in the margin a reply to each suggestion made. When a reader entered a request that somebody's life of Satan be obtained, the official comment read, Purchase not thought necessary. Another suggestion was, Best Sixpenny Cookery by Josias Oldfield does not appear in the catalogue, but should, I think, be procured as it is useful vegetarian work. This was applied for on December 26. Note the date, and was promptly ordered. There is a class of beings to whom it is a great joy to discover a book title that is not in the British Museum, or if there cannot be found for the time being, or is wrongly described, as they think, in the catalogue. "'So you see, sir,' said Dr.
Johnson, on an occasion of this kind, "'when it was lost, it was of immense consequence, and when found, it was no matter at all.'" Garnett's administration of the reading room was characterized by a large increase in the number of readers, the placing of special bibliographies in the room to supply as far as possible the want of a subject catalogue, the formation of a second library of reference in the gallery in the reading room, and the introduction of electric light. The mere mention of electric light shows that we have come down to our own day, and we must take leave of the old-time librarian. Naturally, the atmosphere of the modern public library, with its rush and hustle, proved uncongenial to the old-fashioned librarian.
The less rapidly changing college and university libraries harbored him much longer, but with modern efficiency tests, I suppose that he, too, is to be driven even from The following has been suggested as an appropriate epitaph for him. He loved his library and his books more than the service of his fellow men. Upon the librarian of today devolves many problems not dreamed of by his forerunners. But the success of the library and its utility always have been and always must be measured, to quote Lord Goshen, Largely by the affability and competence of the librarian. What is wanted, according to this wise old statesman, is a librarian who will suffer fools gladly, and who, when asked foolish questions, will guide the questioners aright.
Theodore W. Koch. Some Old-Time Old-World Librarians, 1914, by Theodore Wesley Koch.
-
16 16 - Submarines in War and Peace 36:19
Stories of Inventors. The Adventures of Inventors and Engineers by Russell Doubleday. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Submarines in War and Peace. During the early part of the Spanish-American War, A fleet of vessels patrolled the Atlantic coast, from Florida to Maine. The Spanish Admiral Severa had left the home waters with his fleet of cruisers and torpedo boats, and no one knew where they were. The lookouts on all the vessels were ordered to keep a sharp watch for strange ships and especially for those having a warlike appearance. All the newspapers and letters received on board the different cruises of the patrol fleet told of the anxiety felt in the coast towns and of the fear that the Spanish ships would appear suddenly and begin a bombardment.
To add to the excitement and expectation, especially of the green crews, The men were frequently called out of their comfortable hammocks in the middle of the night and sent to their stations at guns and ammunition magazines, just as if a battle was imminent. All this was for the purpose of familiarising the crews with their duties under war conditions, though no enlisted man knew whether he was called to quarters to fight or for drill. These were the conditions then when, one bright Sunday, the crew of an auxiliary cruiser were very busy cleaning ship, a very thorough and absorbing business. While the men were in the thick of the scrubbing, one of the crew stood up to straighten his back and looked out through an open port in the vessel's side.
As he looked, he caught a glimpse of a low, black craft. Hardly 500 yards off, coming straight for the cruiser. The water foamed at her bows and the black smoke poured out of her funnels, streaking behind her a long, sinister cloud. It was one of those venomous little torpedo boats, and she was apparently rushing in at top speed to get within easy range of the large warship. A torpedo boat is headed straight for us, cried the man at the port. And at the same moment came the call for general quarters. As the men ran to their stations, the word was passed from one to the other. A Spanish torpedo boat is headed for us. With haste born of desperation, the crew worked to get ready for action. And when all was ready, each man in his place, guns loaded, Firing lanyards in hand, gun trainers at the wheels, all was still.
No command to fire was given. From the signal boys to the firemen in the stoke hole, for news travels fast aboard ship, all were expecting the muffled report and the rending, tearing explosion of a torpedo under the ship's bottom. The terrible power of the torpedo was known to all, and the dread that filled the hearts of that waiting crew could not be put into words. Of course, it was a false alarm. The torpedo boat flew the stars and stripes, but the heavy smoke concealed it, and the officers, perceiving the opportunities for testing the men, let it be believed that a boat Belonging to the enemy was bearing down on them. The crews of vessels engaged in future wars will have not only swifter, surer torpedo boats to menace them, but even more dreadful foes.
The conning towers of the submarines show but a foot or two above the surface, a sinister black spot on the water, like the dorsal fin of a shark, that suggests But does not reveal the cruel power below. For an instant, the knob lingers above the surface while the steersman gets his bearings, and then it sinks in a swirling eddy, leaving no mark showing in what direction it has travelled. Then the crew of the exposed warship wait and wonder, with a sickening cold fear in their hearts. How soon the crash will come, and pray that the deadly submarine torpedo will miss its mark. Submarine torpedo boats are actual, practical working vessels today, and already they have to be considered in the naval plans for attack and defence.
Though the importance of submarines in warfare, and especially as a weapon of defence, is beginning to be thoroughly recognised. It took a long time to arouse the interest of naval men, and the public generally, sufficient to give the inventors the support they needed. Americans once had within their grasp the means to blow some of their enemy's ships out of the water, but they did not realize it as will be shown in the following, and for a hundred years the progress in this direction was hindered. It was during the American Revolution that a man went below the surface of the waters of New York Harbour, in a submarine boat just big enough to hold him, and in the darkness and gloom of the underwater world, propelled his turtle-like craft toward the British ships anchored in midstream.
On the outside shell of the craft rested a magazine with a heavy charge of gunpowder. Which the submarine navigator intended to screw fast to the bottom of a 50-gun British man of war, and which was to be exploded by a time fuse after he had got well out of harm's way. Slowly, and with infinite labour, this first submarine navigator worked his way through the water in the first successful underwater boat. The crank handle of the propelling screw in front of him. The helm at his side, and the crank handle of the screw that raised or lowered the craft just above and in front. No other man had made a like voyage. He had little experience to guide him, and he lacked the confidence that a well-tried device assures.
He was alone in a tiny vessel with but half an hour's supply of air, a great box of gunpowder over him. And a hostile fleet all around. It was a perilous position, and he felt it. With his head in the little conning tower, he was able to get a glimpse of the ship he was bent on destroying, as from time to time he raised his little craft to get his bearings. At last, he reached his all-unsuspecting quarry, and sinking under the keel, tried to attach the torpedo. There, in the darkness of the depths of North River, this unnamed hero, in the first practical submarine boat, worked to make the first torpedo fast to the bottom of the enemy's ship. But a little iron plate, or bolt holding the rudder in place, made all the difference between a failure that few people ever heard of, And a great achievement that would have made the inventor of the boat, David Bushnell, famous everywhere.
And the navigator, a great hero. The little iron plate, however, prevented the screw from taking hold. The tide carried the submarine past, and the chance was lost. David Bushnell was too far ahead of his time. His invention was not appreciated. And the failure of his first attempt prevented him from getting the support he needed to demonstrate the usefulness of his underwater craft. The piece of iron in the keel of the British warship probably put back development of submarine boats many years, for Bushnell's boat contained many of the principles upon which the successful underwater craft of the present time are built. One hundred and twenty-five years. After the subsurface voyage described above, a steel boat, built like a whale but with a prow coming to a point, manned by a crew of six, travelling at an average rate of eight knots an hour, armed with five whitehead torpedoes, and designed and built by Americans, passed directly over the spot where the first submarine boat attacked the British fleet.
The Holland boat, Fulton, had already travelled the length of Long Island Sound, diving at intervals, before reaching New York, and was on her way to the Delaware Capes. She was the invention of John P. Holland, and the result of 25 years of experimenting, nine experimental boats having been built before this persistent and courageous inventor. The cruise of the Fulton was like a march of triumph, and proved beyond a doubt that Holland submarines were practical, seagoing craft. At the eastern end of Long Island, the captain and crew, six men in all, one by one entered the Fulton, through the round hatch in the conning tower that projected about two feet above the back of the fish-like vessel.
Each man had his own particular place aboard, and definite duties to perform, so there was no need to move about much. Nor was there much room left by the gasoline motor, the electric motor, storage batteries, air compressor, and air ballast and gasoline tanks, and the Whitehead torpedoes. The captain stood up inside of the conning tower. With his eyes on a level with the little thick glass windows, and in front of him was the wheel connecting with the rudder that steered the craft right and left. Almost at his feet was stationed the man who controlled the diving rudders. Farther aft was the engineer, all ready for the word to start his motor. Another man controlled the ballast tanks, and another watched the electric motor and batteries.
With a clang. The lid-like hatch to the conning tower was closed and clamped fast in its rubber setting. The gasoline engine began its rapid fut-fut, and the submarine boat began its long journey down Long Island Sound. The boat started in with her deck awash, that is, with two or three feet freeboard or off-deck above the waterline. In this condition... She could travel as long as her supply of gasoline held out. Her tanks holding enough to drive her 560 knots, at the speed of 6 knots an hour when in the semi-awash condition. The lower she sank, the greater the surface exposed to the friction of the water, and the greater power expended to attain a given speed. As the vessel jogged along with a good part of her deck showing above the waves, her air ventilators were open, and the burnt gas of the engine was exhausted right out into the open.
The air was as pure as in the cabin of an ordinary ship. Besides the work of propelling the boat, the engine being geared to the electric motor made it revolve. So turning it into a dynamo that created electricity and filled up the storage batteries. From time to time, as this whale-like ship ploughed the waters of the Sound, a big wave would flow entirely over her, and the captain would be looking right into the foaming crest. The boat was built for underwater going, so little daylight penetrated the interior through the few small deadlights or round heavy glass windows, but electric incandescent bulbs fed by current from the storage batteries lit the interior brilliantly. The boat had not proceeded far when the captain ordered the crew to prepare to dive, and immediately the engine was shut down and the clutch One connecting its shaft with the electric apparatus, thrown off, and another connecting the electric motor with the propeller, thrown in.
A switch was then turned, and the current from the storage batteries set the motor and propeller spinning. While this was being done, another man was letting water into her ballast tanks to reduce her buoyancy. When all but the conning tower was submerged, The captain looked at the compass to see how she was heading, noted that no vessels were near enough to make a submarine collision likely, and gave the word to the man at his feet to dive twenty feet. Then a strange thing happened. The diving helmsman gave a twist to the wheel that connected with the horizontal rudders aft of the propeller, and immediately the boat slanted downward. At an angle of ten degrees, the water rose above the conning tower until the little windows were level with the surface, and then they were covered.
And the captain looked into solid water that was still turned yellowish-green by the light of the sun. Then swiftly descending, he saw but the faintest gleam of green light coming through twenty feet of water. The Fulton, with six men in her, The diving helmsman kept his eye on a gauge in front of him that measured the pressure of water at the varying depths, but the dial was so marked that it told him just how many feet the Fulton was below the surface. Another device showed whether the boat was on an even keel or, if not exactly, how many degrees she slanted up or down. With 20 feet of salt water above her and as much below, this mechanical whale cruised along, with her human freight as comfortable as they would have been in the same space ashore.
The vessel contained sufficient air to last them several hours, and when it became vitiated... There was always the tanks of compressed air ready to be drawn upon. Except for the hum of the motor and the slight clank of the steering gear, all was silent. None of the noises of the outer world penetrated the watery depths. Neither the slap of the waves, the whirr of the breeze, the hiss of steam, Nor rattle of rigging accompanied the progress of this submarine craft. As silently as a fish, as far as the outer world was concerned, the Fulton crept through the submarine darkness. If an enemy's ship was near, it would be an easy thing to discharge one of the five whitehead torpedoes she carried and get out of harm's way before it struck the bottom of the ship and exploded.
In the tube which opened at the very tip end of the nose of the craft lay a whitehead, or automobile, torpedo, which when properly set and ejected by compressed air, propelled itself at a predetermined depth at a speed of 30 knots an hour until it struck the object it was aimed at, or its compressed air power gave out. The seven Holland boats built for the United States Navy, of which the Fulton is a prototype, carry five of these torpedoes, one in the tube and two on either side of the hold. And each boat is also provided with one compensating tank for each torpedo, so that when one or all are fired, Their weight may be compensated by filling the tanks with water, so that the trim of the vessel will be kept the same and her stability retained.
The Fulton, however, was bent on a peaceful errand, and carried dummy torpedoes instead of the deadly engines of destruction that the Man-of-War man dreads. At the same time giving his wheel a twist to direct the vessel's course according to the pointing finger of the compass. Dive thirty, sir, repeated the steersman below. And with a slight twist of his gear, the horizontal rudders turned, and the submarine inclined downward. The level indicator showed a slight slant, and the depth gauge hand turned slowly round. Twenty-two. Twenty-five. Twenty-eight. Then thirty feet, when the helmsman turned his wheel back a little, and the vessel forged ahead on a level keel. At thirty feet below the surface, the little craft, built like a cigar on purpose to stand a tremendous squeeze, was subjected to a pressure of 2,160 pounds to the square foot.
To realise this pressure, it will be necessary to think of a slab of iron, a foot square, and weighing 2,160 pounds, pressing on every foot of the outer surface of the craft. Of course, the squeeze is exerted on all sides of the submarine boats when fully submerged, just as everyone is subjected to an atmospheric pressure of 15 pounds to the square inch on every inch of his body. The Fulton and other submarine boats are so strongly built and thoroughly braced that they could stand an even greater pressure without damage. When the commander of the Fulton ordered his vessel to the surface, the diving steersman simply reversed his rudders so that they turned upward, and the propeller, aided by the natural buoyancy of the boat, simply pushed her to the surface.
The Holland boats have a reserve buoyancy. So that if anything should happen to the machinery, they would rise unaided to the surface. Compressed air was turned into the ballast tanks, the water forced out so that the boat's buoyancy was increased, and she floated in a semi-awash or light condition. The engineer turned off the current from the storage batteries, threw off the motor from the propeller shaft, and connected the gasoline engine, started it up, And inside of five minutes from the time the Fulton was navigating the waters of the Sound, at a depth of thirty feet, she was sailing along on the surface like any other gasoline craft. And so the ninety-mile journey down Long Island Sound, partly underwater, partly on the surface, to New York, was completed.
The greater voyage to the Delaware Capes followed. And at all times the little 63-foot boat that was but 11 feet in diameter at her greatest girth carried her crew and equipment with perfect safety and without the least inconvenience. Such a vessel, small in size but great in destructive power, is a force to be reckoned with by the most powerful battleship. No defence has yet been devised that will ward off the deadly sting of the submarine's torpedo. The conning dome was a very strong, and exploded against a portion of the hull that cannot be adequately protected by armour. Though the conning dome The system of a submarine presents a very small target. Its appearance above water shows her position and gives warning of her approach.
To avoid this telltale, an instrument called a periscope has been invented. Which looks like a bottle on the end of a tube. This has lenses and mirrors that reflect into the interior of the submarine whatever shows above water. The bottle part projects above, while the tube penetrates the interior. The very unexpectedness of the submarine's attack, the mere knowledge that they are in the vicinity of a fleet and may launch their deadly missiles at any time, is enough to break down the nerves of the strongest and eventually throw into a panic the bravest crew. That the crews of the warships will have to undergo the strain of submarine attack in the next naval war is almost sure. All the great nations of the world have built fleets of submarines, or are preparing to do so.
In the development of underwater fighting craft, France leads, as she has the largest fleet, And was the first to encourage the designing and building of them. But it was David Bushnell that invented and built the first practical working submarine boat. And in point of efficiency and practical working under service conditions, in actual readiness for hostile action, the American boats excel today. A peaceful submarine. Under the Green Sea. In the total darkness of the great depths and the yellowish-green of the shallows of the oceans, with the seaweeds waving their fronds about their barnacle-encrusted timbers, and the creatures of the deep playing in and about the decks and rotted rigging, lie hundreds of wrecks.
Many a splendid ship with a valuable cargo has gone down off a dangerous coast. Many a hoard of gold or silver, gathered with infinite panes from the far corners of the earth, lies intact in decaying strongboxes on the bottom of the sea. To recover the treasures of the deep, expeditions have been organised. Ships have sailed, divers have descended, and crews have braved great dangers. Many great wrecking companies have been formed. Which accomplish wonders in the saving of wrecked vessels and cargos. But in certain places all the time, and at others part of the time, wreckers have had to leave valuable wrecks a prey to the merciless sea because the ocean is too angry and the waves too high to permit of the safe handling of the air hose and lifeline of the divers who are depended upon to do all the underwater work.
Rigging of hoisting tackle, placing of buoys, etc. Indeed, it is often impossible for a vessel to stay in one place long enough to accomplish anything, or, in fact, to venture to the spot at all. It was an American boy who, after reading Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, said to himself, why not? And from that time... Set out to put into practice what the French writer had imagined. Simon Lake, set to work to invent a way by which a wrecked vessel or a precious cargo could be got at from below the surface. Though the waves may be tossing their whitecaps high in air, and the strong wind may turn the watery plain into rolling hills of angry seas, the water 20 or 30 feet below hardly feels any surface motion.
So he set to work to build a vessel that should be able to sail on the surface, or travel on the bottom, and provide a shelter from which divers could go at will, undisturbed by the most tempestuous sea. People laughed at his idea, and so he found great difficulty in getting enough capital to carry out his plan, and his first boat... Built largely with his own hands, had little in its appearance to inspire confidence in his scheme. Built of wood, fourteen feet long and five feet deep, fitted with three wheels, Argonaut Jr. looked not unlike a large go-kart such as boys make out of a soapbox and a set of wooden wheels. The boat, however, made actual trips, navigated by its inventor, proving that his plan was feasible.
Argonaut Junior, having served its purpose, was abandoned and now lies neglected on one of the beaches of New York Bay. The Argonaut, Mr. Lake's second vessel, had the regular submarine look, except that she was equipped with two great rough treadwheels forward, and to the underside of her rudder was pivoted another. She was really an underwater tricycle, a diving bell, a wrecking craft, And a surface gasoline boat all rolled into one. When floating on the surface, she looked not unlike an ordinary sailing craft. Two long spars, each about thirty feet above the deck, forming the letter A. These were the pipes that emitted fresh air and discharged the burnt gases of the gasoline motor and the vitiated air that had been breathed.
A low deck gave a shipshape appearance when floating. But below, she was shaped like a very fat cigar. Under the deck and outside of the hull proper were placed her gasoline tanks, safe from any possible danger of ignition from the interior. From her nose protruded a spa that looked like a bowsprit, but which was in reality a derrick. Below the derrick boom were several glazed openings that resembled eyes and a mouth. These were the lookout windows for the underwater observer and the submarine searchlight. The Argonaut was built to run on the surface or on the bottom. She was not designed to navigate halfway between. When in search of a wreck or made ready for a cruise along the bottom, the trapdoor or hatch in her turret-like pilot house was tightly closed.
The water was let into her ballast tanks. And two heavy weights to which were attached strong cables that could be wound or unwound from the inside were lowered from their recesses in the fore and after part of the keel of the boat to the bottom. Then the motor was started connected to the winding mechanism, and the buoyancy of the boat being greatly reduced, she was drawn to the bottom by the winding of the anchor cables. As she sank, More and more water was taken into her tanks until she weighed slightly more than the water she displaced. When her wheels rested on the bottom, her anchor weights were pulled completely into their wells so that they would not interfere with her movements. Then the strange submarine vehicle began her voyage on the bottom of the bay, or ocean.
Since the pipes projected above the surface, plenty of fresh air was admitted. And it was quite as easy to run the gasoline engine underwater as on the surface. In the turrets, as far removed as possible from the magnetic influences of the steel hull, the compass was placed, and an ingeniously arranged mirror reflected its readings down below where the steersman could see it conveniently. Aft of the steering wheel was the gasoline motor, connected with the propeller shaft and also with the driving wheels. It was so arranged that either could be thrown out of gear or both operated at once. She was equipped with depth gauges showing the distance below the surface, and another device showing the trim of the vessel, compressed air tanks, propelling and pumping machinery, an air compressor and dynamo, which supplied the current to light the ship and also for the searchlight which illuminated the underwater pathway.
All this apparatus left but little room in the hold, but it was all so carefully planned that not an inch was wasted, and space was still left for her crew of three or four to work, eat, and even sleep below the waves. Forward of the main space of the boat were the diving and lookout compartments, which really were the most important parts of the boat, as far as her wrecking ability was concerned. By means of a trapdoor in the diving compartment through the bottom of the boat, a man fitted with a diving suit could go out and explore a wreck or examine the bottom almost as easily as a man goes out of his front door to call for an extra. It will be thought at once, but the water will rush in when the trapdoor is opened.
This is prevented by filling the diving compartment, which is separated from the main part of the ship by steel walls. With compressed air of sufficient pressure to keep the water from coming in. That is, the pressure of water from without equals the pressure of air from within, and neither element can pass into the other's domain. An airlock separates the driver's section from the main hold, so that it is possible to pass from one to the other while the entrance to the C is still open. A person entering the lock from the large room first closes the door between, and then gradually emits the compressed air until the pressure is the same as in the diving compartment, when the door into it may be safely opened.
When returning, this operation is simply reversed. The lookout stands forward of the diver's space. When the Argonaut rolls along the bottom, round openings protected with heavy glass permit the lookout to follow the beam of light thrown by the searchlight and see dimly any sizeable obstruction. When the diving compartment is in use, the man on lookout duty uses a portable telephone to tell his shipmates in the main room what is happening out in the wet. And by the same means, the reports of the diver can be communicated without opening the airlock. This little ship, 36 feet long, has done wonderful things. She has cruised over the bottom of Chesapeake Bay, New York Bay, Hampton Roads, and the Atlantic Ocean, her driving wheels propelling her when the bottom was hard, And her screw when the oozy condition of the submarine road made her spiked wheels useless except to steer with.
Her passengers have been able to examine the bottom under 20 feet of water without wetting their feet, through the trap door, with the aid of an electric light let down into the clear depths. Telephone messages have been sent from the bottom of Baltimore Harbour to the top of the New York World Building. Telling of the conditions there in contrast to the New York editor's aerial perch. Cables have been picked up and examined without dredging, a hook lowered through the trapdoor being all that was necessary. Wrecks have been examined and valuables recovered. Although the Argonaut travelled over 2,000 miles underwater and on the surface, propelled by her own power, her inventor was not satisfied with her.
He cut her in two, therefore, and added a section to her, making her 66 feet long. This allowed more comfortable quarters for her crew, space for larger engines, compressors, etc. It was off Bridgeport, Connecticut, that the new Argonaut did her first practical wrecking. A barge loaded with coal had sunk in a gale and could not be located with the ordinary means. The Argonaut, however, with the aid of a device called the wreck detector, also invented by Mr. Lake, speedily found it, sank near it, and also submerged a new kind of freight boat built for the purpose by the inventor. A diver quickly explored the Hulk, opened the hatches of the freight boat, which was cigar-shaped like the Argonaut and supplied with wheels so it could be drawn over the bottom, and placed the suction tube in position.
Seven minutes later, eight tons of coal had been transferred from the wreck to the submarine freight boat. The hatches were then closed and compressed air admitted, forcing out the water, and five minutes later, the freight boat was floating on the surface with eight tons of coal from a wreck which could not even be located by the ordinary means. It is possible that in the future these modern Argonauts will be seeking the golden fleeces of the sea and wrecks in gold sands like the beaches of Nome, and that these amphibious boats will be ready along all the dangerous coasts to rush to the rescue of noble ships and wrest them from the clutches of the cruel sea. Mr. Lake has also designed and built a submarine torpedo boat.
That will travel on the surface, under the waves, or on the bottom. Provided with both gasoline and electric power, and fitted with torpedo discharge tubes, she will be able to throw a submarine torpedo. Her diver could attach a charge of dynamite to the keel of an anchored warship, or she could do great damage by hooking up cables through her diver's trapdoor and cutting them. And by setting adrift anchored torpedoes and submarine mines. Thus have Jules Verne's imaginings come true, and the dream Nautilus, whose adventures so many of us have breathlessly followed, has been succeeded by actual Hollands and practical Argonauts, designed by American inventors and manned by American crews. End of Stories of Inventors, The Adventures of Inventors and Engineers by Russell Doubleday.
-
17 17 - The Telephone: Building the Business 43:09
The History of the Telephone by Herbert Kasson. Chapter Two. The Building of the Business.
After the telephone had been born in Boston, baptized in the patent office, and given a royal reception at the Philadelphia Centennial, it might be supposed that its life thenceforth would be one of peace and pleasantness. But as this is history, and not fancy, there must be set down the very surprising fact that the young newcomer received no welcome and no notice from the great business world. It is a scientific toy, said the men of trade and commerce. It is an interesting instrument, of course, for professors of electricity and acoustics, but it can never be a practical necessity. As well might you propose to put a telescope into a steel mill, or to hitch a balloon to a shoe factory. Poor Bell, instead of being applauded, was pelted with a hailstorm of ridicule.
He was an Imposter. A ventriloquist. A crank who says he can talk through a wire. The London Times alluded pompously to the telephone as the latest American humbug, and gave many profound reasons why speech could not be sent over a wire because of the intermittent nature of the electric current. Almost all electricians, the men who were supposed to know, pronounced the telephone an impossible thing, and those who did not openly declare it to be a hoax believed that Bell had stumbled upon some freakish use of electricity which could never be of any practical value. Even though he came late in the succession of inventors, Bell had to run the gauntlet of scoffing and adversity. By the reception that the public gave to his telephone, He learned to sympathize with Howe, whose first sewing machine was smashed by a Boston mob, with McCormick, whose first reaper was called, a cross between an Astley chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a flying machine, with Morse, whom ten Congresses regarded as a nuisance, with Cyrus Field, whose Atlantic cable was denounced as, a mad freak of stubborn ignorance, And with Westinghouse, who was called a fool for proposing to stop a railroad train with wind.
The very idea of talking at a piece of sheet iron was so new and extraordinary that the normal mind repulsed it. Alike to the laborer and the scientist, it was incomprehensible. It was too freakish, too bizarre, to be used outside of the laboratory and the museum. No one, literally, could understand how it worked, and the only man who offered a clear solution of the mystery was a Boston mechanic, who maintained that there was a hole through the middle of the wire. People who talked for the first time into a telephone box had a sort of stage fright. They felt foolish. To do so seemed an absurd performance, especially when they had to shout at the top of their voices. Plainly, whatever of convenience there might be in this new contrivance was far outweighed by the loss of potential dignity, and very few men had sufficient imagination to picture the telephone as a part of the machinery of their daily work.
The banker said it might do well enough for grocers, but that it would never be of any value to banking. And the grocer said it might do well enough for bankers, but it would never be of any value to grocers. As Bell had worked out his invention in Salem, one editor displayed the headline, Salem Witchcraft. The New York Herald said, The effect is weird and almost supernatural. The Providence Press said, It is hard to resist the notion that the powers of darkness are somehow in league with it. And the Boston Times said, in an editorial of bantering ridicule, A fellow can now court his girl in China as well as in East Boston. But the most serious aspect of this invention is the awful and irresponsible power it will give to the average mother-in-law who will be able to send her voice around the habitable globe.
There were hundreds of shrewd capitalists in American cities in 1876, looking with sharp eyes in all directions for business chances. But not one of them came to Bell with an offer to buy his patent. No one came running for a state contract. And neither did any legislature or city council come forward to the task of giving the people a cheap and efficient telephone service. As for Bell himself, he was not a man of affairs. In all practical business matters, he was as incompetent as a Byron or a Shelley. He had done his part And it now remained for men of different abilities to take up his telephone and adapt it to the uses and conditions of the business world.
The first man to undertake this work was Gardiner G. Hubbard, who became soon afterwards the father-in-law of Bell. He, too, was a man of enthusiasm rather than of efficiency. He was not a man of wealth or business experience. But he was admirably suited to introduce the telephone to a hostile public. His father had been a judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and he himself was a lawyer whose practice had been mainly in matters of legislation. He was, in 1876, a man of venerable appearance, with white hair worn long and a patriarchal beard. He was a familiar figure in Washington, and well known among the public men of his day. A versatile and entertaining companion, by turns prosperous and impecunious, and an optimist always, Gardiner Hubbard became a really indispensable factor as the first advance agent of the telephone business.
No other citizen had done more for the city of Cambridge than Hubbard. It was he who secured gas for Cambridge in 1858, and pure water, and a street railway to Boston. He had gone through the South in 1860 in the patriotic hope that he might avert the impending Civil War. He had induced the legislature to establish the first public school for deaf-mutes, the school that drew Bell to Boston in 1871. And he had been for years a most restless agitator for improvements in telegraphy and the post office. So, as a promoter of schemes for the public good, Hubbard was by no means a novice. His first step toward capturing the attention of an indifferent nation was to beat the big drum of publicity. He saw that this new idea of telephoning must be made familiar to the public mind.
He talked telephone by day and by night. Whenever he traveled, he carried a pair of the magical instruments in his valise, and gave demonstrations on trains and in hotels. He buttonholed every influential man who crossed his path. He was a veritable ancient mariner of the telephone. No possible listener was allowed to escape. Further to promote this campaign of publicity, Hubbard encouraged Bell and Watson to perform a series of sensational feats with the telephone. A telegraph wire between New York and Boston was borrowed for half an hour, and in the presence of Sir William Thompson, Bell sent a tune over the two-hundred-and-fifty-mile line. "'Can you hear?' he asked the operator at the New York Inn.
"'Elegantly,' responded the operator. "'What tune?' Bell asked. "'Yankee-doodle,' came the answer. Shortly afterwards, while Bell was visiting at his father's house in Canada, he bought up all the stove-pipe wire in town, and tacked it to a rail fence between the house and a telegraph office. Then he went to a village eight miles distant and sent scraps of songs and Shakespearean quotations over the wire. There was still a large percentage of people who denied that spoken words could be transmitted by a wire. When Watson talked to Bell at public demonstrations, there were newspaper editors who referred skeptically to the suppositious Watson. So, to silence these doubters, Bell and Watson planned a most severe test of the telephone.
They borrowed the telegraph line between Boston and the Cambridge Observatory and attached a telephone to each end. Then they maintained, for three hours or longer, the first sustained conversation by telephone, each one taking careful notes of what he said and of what he heard. These notes were published in parallel columns in The Boston Advertiser, October 19, 1876. and proved beyond question that the telephone was now a practical success. After this, one event crowded quickly on the heels of another. A series of ten lectures was arranged for Bell, at a hundred dollars a lecture, which was the first money payment he had received for his invention. His opening night was in Salem, before an audience of five hundred people, And with Mrs.
Sanders, the motherly old lady who had sheltered Bell in the days of his experiment, sitting proudly in one of the front seats. A poll was set up at the front of the hall, supporting the end of a telegraph wire that ran from Salem to Boston. And Watson, who became the first public talker by telephone, sent messages from Boston to various members of the audience. An account of this lecture was sent by telephone to the Boston Globe, which announced the next morning, This special despatch of the Globe has been transmitted by telephone in the presence of twenty people, who have thus been witnesses to a feat never before attempted, the sending of news over the space of sixteen miles by the human voice.
This Globe despatch awoke the newspaper editors with an unexpected jolt. For the first time, they began to notice that there was a new word in the language, and a new idea in the scientific world. No newspaper had made any mention whatever of the telephone for seventy-five days after Bell received his patent. Not one of the swarm of reporters who thronged the Philadelphia centennial had regarded the telephone as a matter of any public interest. But when a column of news was sent by telephone to the Boston Globe, The whole newspaper world was agog with excitement. A thousand pens wrote the name of Bell. Requests to repeat his lecture came to Bell from Cyrus W. Field, the veteran of the Atlantic Cable, from the poet Longfellow, and from many others.
As he was by profession an elocutionist, Bell was able to make the most of these opportunities. His lectures became popular entertainments. They were given in the largest halls. At one lecture, two Japanese gentlemen were induced to talk to one another in their own language via the telephone. At a second lecture, a band played The Star-Spangled Banner in Boston and was heard by an audience of 2,000 people in Providence. At a third, Signor Ferrante, who was in Providence, sang a selection from The Marriage of Figaro to an audience in Boston. At a fourth, an exhortation from Moody and a song from Sankey came over the vibrating wire. And at a fifth, in New Haven, Bell stood sixteen Yale professors in line, hand in hand, and talked through their bodies, a feat which was then, and is to-day, Almost too wonderful to believe.
Very slowly these lectures and the tireless activity of Hubbard pushed back the ridicule and the incredulity, and in the merry month of May, 1877, a man named Emery drifted into Hubbard's office from the nearby city of Charlestown and leased two telephones for twenty actual dollars, the first money ever paid for a telephone. This was the first Feeble sign that such a novelty as the telephone business could be established. And no money ever looked handsomer than this twenty dollars did to Bell, Sanders, Hubbard, and Watson. It was the tiny first fruit of fortune. Greatly encouraged, they prepared a little circular, which was the first advertisement of the telephone business. It is an oddly simple little document today, but to the 1877 brain, it was startling.
It modestly claimed that a telephone was superior to a telegraph for three reasons. One. No skilled operator is required, but direct communication may be had by speech without the intervention of a third person. Two. The communication is much more rapid, the average number of words transmitted in a minute by the Morse sounder being from 15 to 20, by telephone from 1 to 200. Three. No expense is required, either for its operation or repair. It needs no battery, and has no complicated machinery. It is unsurpassed for economy and simplicity. The only telephone line in the world at this time was between the Williams workshop in Boston and the home of Mr. Williams in Somerville. But in May 1877, a young man named E.
T. Holmes, who was running a burglar alarm business in Boston, proposed that a few telephones be linked to his wires. He was a friend and customer of Williams, and suggested this plan half in jest and half in earnest. Hubbard was quick to seize this opportunity, and at once lent Holmes a dozen telephones. Without asking permission, Holmes went into six banks and nailed up a telephone in each. Five bankers made no protest, but the sixth indignantly ordered that play toy to be taken out. The other five telephones could be connected by a switch in Holmes' office, and thus was born the first tiny and crude telephone exchange. Here it ran for several weeks as a telephone system by day and a burglar alarm by night.
No money was paid by the bankers. The service was given to them as an exhibition and an advertisement. The little shelf with its five telephones was no more like the marvelous exchanges of today than a canoe is like a cunarder. But it was unquestionably the first place where several telephone wires came together and could be united. Soon afterwards, Holmes took his telephones out of the banks and started a real telephone business among the express companies of Boston. But by this time, several exchanges had been opened for ordinary business in New Haven, Bridgeport, New York, and Philadelphia. Also, a man from Michigan had arrived, with the hardy hood to ask for a state agency, George W. Balch of Detroit.
He was so welcome that Hubbard joyfully gave him everything he asked—a perpetual right to the whole state of Michigan. Balch was not required to pay a cent in advance except his railway fare, and before he was many years older he had sold his lease for a handsome fortune of a quarter of a million dollars, honestly earned by his initiative and enterprise.
By August, when Bell's patent was sixteen months old, There were 778 telephones in use. This looked like success to the optimistic Hubbard. He decided that the time had come to organize the business, so he created a simple agreement which he called the Bell Telephone Association. This agreement gave Bell, Hubbard, and Sanders a three-tenths interest apiece in the patents, and Watson one-tenth. There was no capital. There was none to be had. The four men had at this time an absolute monopoly of the telephone business, and everybody else was quite willing that they should have it. The only man who had money and dared to stake it on the fortune of the telephone was Thomas Sanders, and he did this not mainly for business reasons.
Both he and Hubbard were attached to Bell primarily by sentiment, as Bell had removed the blight of dumbness from Sanders' little son, and was soon to marry Hubbard's daughter. Also, Sanders had no expectation, at first, that so much money would be needed. He was not rich. His entire business, which was that of cutting out soles for shoe manufacturers, was not at any time worth more than thirty-five thousand dollars. Yet from 1874 to 1878, he had advanced nine-tenths of the money that was spent on the telephone. He had paid Bell's room rent, and Watson's wages, and William's expenses, and the cost of the exhibit at the Centennial. The first five thousand telephones, and more, were made with his money.
And so many long, expensive months dragged by before any relief came to Sanders, that he was compelled Much against his will and his business judgment, to stretch his credit within an inch of the breaking point to help Bell and the telephone. Desperately he signed note after note until he faced a total of one hundred and ten thousand dollars. If the new scientific toy succeeded, which he often doubted, he would be the richest citizen in Haverhill, and if it failed, which he sorely feared, He would be a bankrupt. A disheartening series of rebuffs slowly forced the truth in upon Sanders' mind that the business world refused to accept the telephone as an article of commerce. It was a toy, a plaything, a scientific wonder, but not a necessity to be bought and used for ordinary purposes by ordinary people.
Capitalists treated it exactly as they had treated the Atlantic Cable Project when Cyrus Field visited Boston in 1862. They admired and marveled, but not a man subscribed a dollar. Also, Sanders very soon learned that it was a most unpropitious time for the setting afloat of a new enterprise. It was a period of turmoil and suspicion. What with the Jay Cooke failure, The Hayes-Tilton deadlock, and the bursting of a hundred railroad bubbles, there was very little in the news of the day to encourage investors. It was impossible for Sanders, or Bell, or Hubbard, to prepare any definite plan. No matter what the plan might have been, they had no money to put it through. They believed that they had something new and marvelous which someone, somewhere, would be willing to buy.
Until this good genie should arrive, they could do no more than flounder ahead, and take whatever business was the nearest and the cheapest. So, while Bell, in eloquent rhapsodies, painted word pictures of a universal telephone service to applauding audiences, Sanders and Hubbard were leasing telephones two by two to businessmen who previously had been using the private lines of the Western Union Telegraph Company. This great corporation was, at the time, their natural and inevitable enemy. It had swallowed most of its competitors, and was reaching out to monopolize all methods of communication by wire. The rosiest hope that shone in front of Sanders and Hubbard was that the Western Union might conclude to buy the Bell patents, just as it had already bought many others.
In one moment of discouragement, they had offered the telephone to President Orton of the Western Union for one hundred thousand dollars, and Orton had refused it. What use, he asked pleasantly, could this company make of an electrical toy? But besides the operation of its own wires, the Western Union was supplying customers with various kinds of printing telegraphs and dial telegraphs, some of which could transmit 60 words a minute. These accurate instruments, it believed, could never be displaced by such a scientific oddity as the telephone. And it continued to believe this until one of its subsidiary companies, the Gold & Stock, reported that several of its machines had been superseded by telephones.
At once the Western Union awoke from its indifference. Even this tiny nibbling at its business must be stopped. It took action quickly and organized the American Speaking Telephone Company with three hundred thousand dollars capital and with three electrical inventors, Edison, Gray, and Dolbear, on its staff. With all the bulk of its great wealth and prestige, it swept down upon Bell and its little bodyguard. It trampled upon Bell's patent with as little concern as an elephant can have when he tramples upon an ant's nest. To the complete bewilderment of Bell, it coolly announced that it had the only original telephone, and that it was ready to supply Superior telephones with all the latest improvements made by the original inventors, Dolbear, Gray, and Edison.
The result was strange and unexpected. The Bell Group, instead of being driven from the field, were at once lifted to a higher level in the business world. The effect was as if the Standard Oil Company were to commence the manufacture of aeroplanes. In a flash, the telephone ceased to be a scientific toy and became an article of commerce. It began for the first time to be taken seriously, and the Western Union, in the endeavor to protect its private lines, became involuntarily a bellwether to lead capitalists in the direction of the telephone. Sanders' relatives, who were many and rich, came to his rescue. Most of them were well-known businessmen. The Bradleys, the Saltonstalls, Fay, Silsby, and Carleton.
These men, together with Colonel William H. Forbes, who came in as a friend of the Bradleys, were the first capitalists who, for purely business reasons, invested money in the Bell Patents. Two months after the Western Union had given its weighty endorsement to the telephone, these men organized a company to do business in New England only, and put $50,000 in its treasury. In a short time, the delighted Hubbard found himself leasing telephones at the rate of $1,000 a month. He was no longer a promoter, but a general manager. Men were standing in line to ask for agencies. Crude little telephone exchanges were being started in a dozen or more cities. There was a spirit of confidence and enterprise, and the next step, clearly, was to create a business organization.
None of the partners were competent to undertake such a work. Hubbard had little aptitude as an organizer, Bell had none, and Sanders was held fast by his leather interests. Here, at last, after four years of the most heroic efforts, were the raw materials out of which a telephone business could be constructed. But who was to be the builder, and where was he to be found? One morning, the indefatigable Hubbard solved the problem. "'Watson,' he said, "'there's a young man in Washington who can handle this situation, and I want you to run down and see what you think of him.' Watson went, Reported favorably, and in a day or so the young man received a letter from Hubbard offering him the position of general manager at a salary of thirty five hundred dollars a year.
We rely, Hubbard said, upon your executive ability, your fidelity, and your unremitting zeal. The young man replied in one of those dignified letters more usual in the nineteenth than in the twentieth century. My faith in the success of the enterprise is such that I am willing to trust to it, he wrote, and I have confidence that we shall establish the harmony and cooperation that is essential to the success of an enterprise of this kind.
One week later the young man, Theodore N. Vale, took his seat as general manager in a tiny office in Reed Street, New York, and the building of the business began. This arrival of Vale at the critical moment emphasized the fact that Bell was one of the most fortunate of inventors. He was not robbed of his invention, as might easily have happened. One by one there arrived to help him a number of able men, with all the various abilities that the changing situation required. There was such a focusing of factors that the whole matter appeared to have been previously rehearsed. No sooner had Bell appeared on the stage than his supporting players, each in his turn, received his cue and took part in the action of the drama.
There was not one of these men who could have done the work of any other. Each was distinctive and indispensable. Bell invented the telephone, Watson constructed it, Sanders financed it, Hubbard introduced it, and Vale put it on a business basis. The new general manager had, of course, no experience in the telephone business. Neither had anyone else. But he, like Bell, came to his task with a most surprising fitness. He was a member of the historic Vail family of Morristown, New Jersey, which had operated the Speedwell Ironworks for four or five generations. His grand-uncle Stephen had built the engines for the Savannah, the first American steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. And his cousin Alfred was the friend and co-worker of Morse, the inventor of the telegraph.
Morse had lived for several years at the Vale homestead in Morristown, and it was here that he erected his first telegraph line, a three-mile circle around the ironworks, in 1888. He and Alfred Vale experimented side by side in the making of the telegraph, and Vale eventually received a fortune for his share of the Morse patent. Thus it happened that young Theodore Vale learned the dramatic story of Morse at his mother's knee. As a boy, he played around the first telegraph line, and learned to put messages on the wire. His favorite toy was a little telegraph that he had constructed for himself. At twenty-two, he went west, in the vague hope of possessing a bonanza farm. Then he swung back into telegraphy, and in a few years found himself in the government mail service at Washington.
By 1876, he was head of this department, which he completely reorganized. He introduced the bag system in postal cars, and made war on waste and clumsiness. By virtue of this position, he was the one man in the United States who had a comprehensive view of all railways and telegraphs. He was much more apt, consequently, than other men to develop the idea of a national telephone system. While in the midst of this bureaucratic housecleaning, he met Hubbard, who had just been appointed by President Hayes as the head of a commission on mail transportation. He and Hubbard were constantly thrown together, on trains and in hotels, and as Hubbard invariably had a pair of telephones in his valise, The two men soon became co-enthusiasts.
Vale found himself painting brain pictures of the future telephone, and by the time he was asked to become his general manager, he had become so confident that, as he said afterwards, he was willing to leave a government job with a small salary for a telephone job with no salary. So, just as Amos Kendall had left the post office service thirty years before to establish the telegraph business, Theodore N. Vale left the post office service to establish the telephone business. He had been in authority over 3,500 postal employees and was the developer of a system that covered every inhabited portion of the country. Consequently, he had a quality of experience that was immensely valuable in straightening out the tangled affairs of the telephone.
Line by line, he mapped out a method, a policy, a system. He introduced a larger view of the telephone business and swept off the table all schemes for selling out. He persuaded half a dozen of his post office friends to buy stock, so that in less than two months the first Bell Telephone Company was organized, with $450,000 capital and a service of 12,000 telephones. Vale's first step, naturally, was to stiffen up the backbone of this little company, and to prevent the Western Union from frightening it into a surrender. He immediately sent a copy of Bell's patent to every agent, with orders to hold the fort against all opposition. "'We have the only original telephone patents,' he wrote. "'We have organized and introduced the business, and we do not propose to have it taken from us by any corporation.' To one agent, who was showing the white feather, he wrote, "'You have too great an idea of the Western Union.
If it was all massed in your one city, you might well fear it. But it is represented there by one man only, and he probably has as much as he can attend to outside of the telephone. For you to acknowledge that you cannot compete with his influence when you make it your special business is hardly the thing.' There may be a dozen concerns that will all go to the Western Union, but they will not take with them all their friends. I would advise that you go ahead and keep your present advantage. We must organize companies with sufficient vitality to carry on a fight, as it is simply useless to get a company started that will succumb to the first bit of opposition it may encounter. Next, having encouraged his thoroughly alarmed agents, Vail proceeded to build up a definite business policy.
He stiffened up the contracts and made them good for five years only. He confined each agent to one place, and reserved all rights to connect one city with another. He established a department to collect and protect any new inventions that concerned the telephone. He agreed to take part of the royalties in stock, when any local company preferred to pay its debts in this way. And he took steps toward standardizing all telephonic apparatus by controlling the factories that made it. These various measures were part of Vale's plan to create a national telephone system. His central idea, from the first, was not the mere leasing of telephones, but rather the creation of a federal company that would be a permanent partner in the entire telephone business.
Even in that day of small things, and amidst the confusion and rough-and-tumble of pioneering, he worked out the broad policy that prevails today. And this goes far to explain the fact that there are in the United States twice as many telephones as there are in all other countries combined. Vale arrived very much as Blucher did at the Battle of Waterloo. A trifle late, But in time to prevent the telephone forces from being routed by the old guard of the Western Union. He was scarcely seated in his managerial chair when the Western Union threw the entire Bell army into confusion by launching the Edison transmitter. Edison, who was at that time fairly started in his career of wizardry, had made an instrument of marvelous alertness.
It was beyond all arguments superior to the telephones then in use, And the lessees of bell telephones clamored with one voice for, "'A transmitter as good as Edison's.' This, of course, could not be had in a moment, and the five months that followed were the darkest days in the childhood of the telephone. How to compete with the Western Union, which had this superior transmitter, a host of agents, a network of wires, forty millions of capital, and a first claim upon all newspapers, hotels, railroads, and rights-of-way—that That was the immediate problem that confronted the new general manager. Every inch of progress had to be fought for. Several of his captains deserted, and he was compelled to take control of their unprofitable exchanges.
There was scarcely a mail that did not bring him some bulletin of discouragement or defeat. In the effort to conciliate a hostile public, the telephone rates had everywhere been made too low. Hubbard had set a price of $20 a year for the use of two telephones on a private line, and when exchanges were started, the rate was seldom more than $3 a month. There were deadheads in abundance, mostly officials and politicians. In St. Louis, one of the few cities that charged a sufficient price, nine-tenths of the merchants refused to become subscribers. In Boston, the first pay station ran three months before it earned a dollar. Even as late as 1880, when the first National Telephone Convention was held at Niagara Falls, one of the delegates expressed the general situation very correctly when he said, We were all in a state of enthusiastic uncertainty.
We were full of hope, yet when we analyzed those hopes, they were very airy indeed. There was probably not one company that could say it was making a cent, nor even that it was expected to make a cent. Especially in the largest cities, where the Western Union had most power, the lives of the telephone pioneers were packed with hardships and adventures. In Philadelphia, for instance, a resolute young man named Thomas E. Cornish was attacked as though he had suddenly become a public enemy when he set out to establish the first telephone service. No official would grant him a permit to string wires. His workmen were arrested. The printing telegraph men warned him that he must either quit or be driven out.
When he asked capitalists for money, they replied he might as well expect to lease Jews' harps as telephones. Finally, he was compelled to resort to strategy where argument had failed. He had received an order from Colonel Thomas Scott, who wanted a wire between his house and his office. Colonel Scott was the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and therefore a man of the highest prestige in the city. So as soon as Cornish had put this line in place, he kept his men at work stringing other lines. When the police interfered, he showed them Colonel Scott's signature and was let alone. In this way, he put fifteen wires up before the trick was discovered, and soon afterwards, with eight subscribers, he founded the First Philadelphia Exchange.
As may be imagined, such battling as this did not put much money into the treasury of the parent company, and the letters written by Sanders at this time proved that it was in a hard plight. The following was one of the queries put to Hubbard by the overburdened Sanders. "'How on earth do you expect me to meet a draft of two hundred and seventy-five dollars without a dollar in the treasury, and with a debt of thirty thousand dollars staring us in the face?' "'Vale's salary is small enough,' he continued in a second letter, "'but as to where it is coming from, I am not so clear. "'Bradley is awfully blue and discouraged. "'Williams is tormenting me for money, "'and my personal credit will not stand everything.
"'I have advanced the company $2,000 today, "'and Williams must have $3,000 more this month.'" His payday has come, and his capital will not carry him another inch. If Bradley throws up his hand, I will unfold to you my last desperate plan." And if the company had little money, it had less credit. Once, when Vale had ordered a small bill of goods from a merchant named Tillotson, of Fifteen Days Street, New York, the merchant replied that the goods were ready, and so was the bill, which was seven dollars. By a strange coincidence, the magnificent building of the New York Telephone Company stands today on the site of Tillotson's store. Month after month, the Little Bell Company lived from hand to mouth.
No salaries were paid in full. Often, for weeks, they were not paid at all. In Watson's Notebook, there are such entries during this period as, Lent Bell, 50 cents. Lent Hubbard, 20 cents. Bought one bottle beer. Too bad can't have beer every day. More than once Hubbard would have gone hungry had not Devonshire, the only clerk, shared with him the contents of a dinner pail. Each one of the little group was beset by taunts and temptations. Watson was offered $10,000 for his one-tenth interest, and hesitated three days before refusing it. Railroad companies offered Vail a salary that was higher and sure if he would superintend their mail business. And as for Sanders, his folly was the talk of Haverhill.
One Haverhill capitalist, E.J.M. Hale, stopped him on the street and asked, "'Haven't you got a good leather business, Mr. Sanders?' "'Yes,' replied Sanders. "'Well,' said Hale, "'you had better attend to it and quit playing on wind instruments.'" Sanders' banker, too, became uneasy on one occasion, and requested him to call at the bank. "'Mr. Sanders,' he said, "'I will be obliged if you will take that telephone stock out of the bank and give me in its place your note for $30,000. I am expecting the examiner here in a few days, and I don't want to get caught with that stuff in the bank.' Then, in the very midnight of this depression, poor Bell returned from England, whither he and his bride had gone on their honeymoon, and announced that he had no money.
that he had failed to establish a telephone business in England, and that he must have a thousand dollars at once to pay his urgent debts. He was thoroughly discouraged and sick. As he lay in the Massachusetts General Hospital, he wrote a cry for help to the embattled little company that was making its desperate fight to protect his patents. Thousands of telephones are now in operation in all parts of the country, he said, yet I have not received one cent from my invention. On the contrary, I am largely out of pocket by my researches, as the mere value of the profession that I have sacrificed during my three years' work amounts to twelve thousand dollars. Fortunately, there came, in almost the same mail with Bell's letter, another letter from a young Bostonian named Francis Blake, with the good news that he had invented a transmitter as satisfactory as Edison's, and that he would prefer to sell it for stock instead of cash.
If ever a man came as an angel of light, that man was Francis Blake. The possession of his transmitter instantly put the Bell Company on an even footing with the Western Union in the matter of apparatus. It encouraged the few capitalists who had invested money, and it stirred others to come forward. The general business situation had by this time become more settled, and in four months the company had 22,000 telephones in use, and had reorganized into the National Bell Telephone Company, with $850,000 capital and with Colonel Forbes as its first president. Forbes now picked up the load that had been carried so long by Sanders. As the son of an East India merchant and the son-in-law of Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was a Bostonian of the Brahmin caste.
He was a big four-square man who was both popular and efficient, and his leadership at this crisis was of immense value. This reorganization put the telephone business into the hands of competent businessmen at every point. It brought the heroic and experimental period to an end. From this time onwards, the telephone had strong friends in the financial world. It was being attacked by the Western Union and by rival inventors who were jealous of Bell's achievement. It was being half-starved by cheap rates and crippled by clumsy apparatus. It was being abused and grumbled at by an impatient public. But the art of making and marketing it had at last been built up into a commercial enterprise. It was now a business, fighting for its life.
-
18 18 - The Telephone: Patent Disputes 38:18
The History of the Telephone by Herbert Kasson.
Chapter Three. The Holding of the Business. For seventeen months no one disputed Bell's claim to be the original inventor of the telephone. All the honor, such as it was, had been given to him freely, and no one came forward to say that it was not rightfully his. No one, so far as we know, had any strong desire to do so. No one conceived that the telephone would ever be any more than a whimsical oddity of science. It was so new, so unexpected, that from Lord Kelvin down to the messenger boys in the telegraph offices, it was an incomprehensible surprise. But after Bell had explained his invention in public lectures before more than twenty thousand people, after it had been on exhibition for months at the Philadelphia Centennial, after several hundred articles on it had appeared in newspapers and scientific magazines, And after actual sales of telephones had been made in various parts of the country, there began to appear such a succession of claimants and infringers that the forgetful public came to believe that the telephone, like most inventions, was the product of many minds.
Just as Morse, who was the sole inventor of the American Telegraph in 1837, was confronted by 62 rivals in 1838, so Bell Who was the sole inventor in 1876, found himself two years later almost mobbed by the tick-borne claimants of the telephone. The inventors who had been his competitors in the attempt to produce a musical telegraph persuaded themselves that they had unconsciously done as much as he. Any possessor of a telegraphic patent who had used the common phrase Talking wire, had a chance to build up a plausible story of prior invention. And others came forward with claims so vague and elusive that Bell would scarcely have been more surprised if the heirs of Goethe had demanded a share of the telephone royalties on the ground that Faust had spoken of, making a bridge through the moving air.
This babble of inventors and pretenders amazed Bell and disconcerted his backers. But it was no more than might have been expected. Here was a patent, the most valuable single patent ever issued, and yet the invention itself was so simple that it could be duplicated easily by any smart boy or any ordinary mechanic. The making of a telephone was like the trick of Columbus standing an egg on end. Nothing was easier to those who knew how. And so it happened that, as the crude little model of Bell's original telephone lay in the patent office, open and unprotected except by a few phrases that clever lawyers might evade, there sprang up inevitably around it the most costly and persistent patent war that any country has ever known, continuing for eleven years and comprising six hundred lawsuits.
The first attack upon the young telephone business was made by the Western Union Telegraph Company. It came charging full tilt upon Bell, driving three inventors abreast, Edison, Gray, and Dolbear. It expected an easy victory. In fact, the disparity between the two opponents was so evident that there seemed little chance of a contest of any kind. The Western Union will swallow up the telephone people, said Public Opinion, just as it has already swallowed up all improvements in telegraphy. At that time, it should be remembered, the Western Union was the only corporation that was national in its extent. It was the most powerful electrical company in the world, and, as Bell wrote to his parents, probably the largest corporation that ever existed.
It had behind it not only forty millions of capital, but the prestige of the Vanderbilts, and the favor of financiers everywhere. Also, it met the telephone pioneers at every point because it, too, was a wire company. It owned rights-of-way along roads and on housetops. It had a monopoly of hotels and railroad offices. No matter in what direction the Bell Company turned, the live wire of the Western Union lay across its path. From the first, the Western Union relied more upon its strength than upon the merits of its case. Its chief electrical expert, Frank L. Pope, had made a six-month examination of the Bell patents. He had bought every book in the United States and Europe that was likely to have any reference to the transmission of speech, and employed a professor who knew eight languages to translate them.
He and his men ransacked libraries and patent offices. They rummaged and sleuthed and interviewed, and found nothing of any value. In his final report to the Western Union, Mr. Pope announced that there was no way to make a telephone except Bell's way, and advised the purchase of the Bell patents. "'I am entirely unable to discover any apparatus or method anticipating the invention of Bell as a whole,' he said, "'and I conclude that his patent is valid.' But the officials of the great corporation refused to take this report seriously. They threw it aside and employed Edison, Gray, and Dolbear to devise a telephone that could be put into competition with Bells. As we have seen in the previous chapter, there now came a period of violent competition, which is remembered as the dark ages of the telephone business.
The Western Union bought out several of the Bell exchanges and opened up a lively war on the others. As befitting its size, it claimed everything. It introduced Gray as the original inventor of the telephone, and ordered its lawyers to take action at once against the Bell Company for infringement of the Gray patent. This high-handed action, it hoped, would most quickly bring the little Bell group into a humble and submissive frame of mind. Every morning the Western Union looked to see the white flag flying over the Bell headquarters. But no white flag appeared. On the contrary, the news came that the Bell Company had secured two eminent lawyers and were ready to give battle. The case began in the autumn of 1878 and lasted for a year.
Then it came to a sudden and most unexpected ending. The lawyer-in-chief of the Western Union was George Gifford, who was perhaps the ablest patent attorney of his day. He was versed in patent lore from Alpha to Omega, and as the trial proceeded, He became convinced that the Bell patent was valid. He notified the Western Union confidentially, of course, that its case could not be proven, and that Bell was the original inventor of the telephone. The best policy, he suggested, was to withdraw their claims and make a settlement. This wise advice was accepted, and the next day the white flag was hauled up. Not by the little group of bell-fighters, who were huddled together in a tiny two-room office, but by the mighty Western Union itself, which had been so arrogant when the encounter began.
A committee of three from each side was appointed, and after months of disputation, a treaty of peace was drawn up and signed. By the terms of this treaty, the Western Union agreed, one, to admit that Bell was the original inventor. Two. To admit that his patents were valid. Three. To retire from the telephone business. The Bell Company, in return for this surrender, agreed... One. To buy the Western Union telephone system. Two. To pay the Western Union a royalty of 20% on all telephone rentals. Three. To keep out of the telegraph business. This agreement... Which was to remain in force for 17 years, was a masterstroke of diplomacy on the part of the Bell Company. It was the Magna Carta of the telephone.
It transformed a giant competitor into a friend. It added to the Bell System 56,000 telephones in 55 cities. And it swung the valiant little company up to such a pinnacle of prosperity that its stock went skyrocketing until it touched One thousand dollars a share. The Western Union had lost its case for several very simple reasons. It had tried to operate a telephone system on telegraphic lines, a plan that has invariably been unsuccessful. It had a low idea of the possibilities of the telephone business. And its already busy agents had little time or knowledge or enthusiasm to give to the new enterprise. With all its power, it found itself outfought by this compact body of picked men, who were young, zealous, well-handled, and protected by a most invulnerable patent.
The Bell Telephone now took its place with the telegraph, the railroad, the steamboat, the harvester, and the other necessities of a civilized country. Its pioneer days were over. There was no more ridicule and incredulity. Everyone knew that the Bell people had whipped the Western Union and hastened to join in the grand todaym of applause. Within five months from the signing of the agreement, there had to be a reorganization, and the American Bell Telephone Company was created, with six million dollars capital. In the following year, 1881, twelve hundred new towns and cities were marked on the telephone map, and the first dividends were paid. $178,500. And in 1882, there came such a telephone boom that the Bell system was multiplied by two, with more than a million dollars of gross earnings.
At this point, all the earliest pioneers of the telephone, except Vale, pass out of its history. Thomas Sanders sold his stock for somewhat less than a million dollars, and presently lost most of it in a Colorado gold mine. His mother, who had been so good a friend to Bell, had her fortune doubled. Gardiner G. Hubbard withdrew from business life, and as it was impossible for a man of his ardent temperament to be idle, he plunged into the National Geographic Society. He was a Colonel Sellers whose dream of millions, for the telephone, had come true, and when he died in 1897 he was rich both in money and in the affection of his friends. Charles Williams, in whose workshop the first telephones were made, sold his factory to the Bell Company in 1881 for more money than he had ever expected to possess.
Thomas A. Watson resigned at the same time, finding himself no longer a wage worker, but a millionaire. Several years later, he established a shipbuilding plant near Boston. which grew until it employed four thousand workmen and had built half a dozen warships for the United States Navy. As for Bell, the first cause of the telephone business, he did what a true scientific bohemian might have been expected to do. He gave all his stock to his bride on their marriage day and resumed his work as an instructor of deaf-mutes. Few kings, if any, had ever given so rich a wedding present. And certainly no one in any country ever obtained and tossed aside an immense fortune as incidentally as did Bell.
When the Bell Company offered him a salary of $10,000 a year to remain its chief inventor, he refused the offer, cheerfully, on the ground that he could not invent to order. In 1880, the French government gave him the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. He has had many honors since then, and many interests. He has been for thirty years one of the most brilliant and picturesque personalities in American public life. But none of his later achievements can in any degree compare with what he did in a cellar in Salem at twenty-eight years of age. They had all become rich, these first friends of the telephone, but not fabulously so. There was not at that time, nor has there been since, anyone who became a multimillionaire by the sale of telephone service.
If the Bell Company had sold its stock at the highest price reached in 1880, it would have received less than nine million dollars, a huge sum, but not too much to pay for the invention of the telephone and the building up of a new art and a new industry. It was not as much as the value of the eggs laid during the last twelve months by the hens of Iowa. But, as may be imagined, when the news of the Western Union Agreement became known, the story of the telephone became a fairy tale of success. Theodore Vale was given a banquet by his old-time friends in the Washington Postal Service, and toasted as the Monte Cristo of the telephone. It was said that the actual cost of the Bell plant was only one-twenty-fifth of its capital, and that every four cents of investment had thus become a dollar.
Even Jay Gould, carried beyond his usual caution by these stories, ran up to New Haven and bought its telephone company, only to find out later that its earnings were less than its expenses.
Much to the bewilderment of the Bell Company, It soon learned that the troubles of wealth are as numerous as those of poverty. It was beset by a throng of promoters and stock jobbers who fell upon it and upon the public like a swarm of seventeen-year locusts. In three years, one hundred and twenty-five competing companies were started, in open defiance of the Bell Patents. The main object of these companies was not, like that of the Western Union, to do a legitimate telephone business. But to sell stock to the public. The face value of their stock was $225 million, although few of them ever sent a message. One company of unusual impertinence, without money or patents, had capitalized its audacity at $15 million.
How to hold the business that had been established? That was now the problem. None of the Bell Partners had been mere stock jobbers. At one time, they had even taken a pledge not to sell any of their stock to outsiders. They had financed their company in a most honest and simple way, and they were desperately opposed to the financial banditti whose purpose was to transform the telephone business into a cheat and a gamble. At first, having held their own against the Western Union, they expected to make short work of the stock jobbers. But it was a vain hope. These bogus companies, they found, did not fight in the open, as the Western Union had done. All manner of injurious rumors were presently set afloat concerning the Bell patent.
Other inventors, some of them honest men, and some shameless pretenders, were brought forward with strangely concocted tales of prior invention. The Granger movement was at that time a strong political factor in the Middle West. And its blind fear of patents and monopolies was turned aggressively against the Bell Company. A few senators and legitimate capitalists were lifted up as the figureheads of the crusade. And a loud hue and cry was raised in the newspapers against high rates and monopoly to distract the minds of the people from the real issue of legitimate business versus stock company bubbles. The most plausible and persistent of all the various inventors who snatched at Bell's laurels was Elisha Gray.
He refused to abide by the adverse decision of the court. Several years after his defeat, he came forward with new weapons and new methods of attack. He became more hostile and irreconcilable, and until his death in 1901, never renounced his claim to be the original inventor of the telephone. The reason for this persistence is very evident. Gray was a professional inventor, a highly competent man, who had begun his career as a blacksmith's apprentice and risen to be a professor of Oberlin. He made, during his lifetime, over five million dollars by his patents. In 1874, he and Bell were running a neck-and-neck race to see who could first invent a musical telegraph. When, presto! Bell suddenly turned aside, because of his acoustical knowledge, and invented the telephone, while Gray kept straight ahead.
Like all others who were in quest of a better telegraph instrument, Gray had glimmerings of the possibility of sending speech by wire, and by one of the strangest of coincidences he filed a caveat on the subject on the same day that Bell filed the application for a patent. Bell had arrived first. As the record book shows, the fifth entry on that day was A. G. Bell, $15, and the thirty-ninth entry was E. Gray, $10. There was a vast difference between Gray's caveat and Bell's application. A caveat is a declaration that the writer has not invented a thing, but believes that he is about to do so. While an application is a declaration that the writer has already perfected the invention, but Gray could never forget that he had seemed to be, for a time, so close to the Golden Prize, and seven years after he had been set aside by the Western Union Agreement, he reappeared with claims that had grown larger and more definite.
When all the evidence in the various Gray lawsuits is sifted out, there appear to have been three distinctly different Grays. First, Gray the Scoffer, who examined Bell's telephone at the Centennial and said it was, "...nothing but the old lover's telegraph. It is impossible to make a practical speaking telephone on the principle shown by Professor Bell. The currents are too feeble." Second, Gray the Convert, who wrote frankly to Bell in 1877. I do not claim the credit of inventing it. And third, Gray the Claimant, who endeavored to prove in 1886 that he was the original inventor. His real position in the matter was once well and wittily described by his partner, Enos M. Barton, who said, Of all the men who didn't invent the telephone, Gray was the nearest.
It is now clearly seen that the telephone owes nothing to Gray. There are no Gray telephones in use in any country. Even Gray himself, as he admitted in court, failed when he tried to make a telephone on the lines laid down in his caveat. The final word on the whole matter was recently spoken by George C. Maynard, who established the telephone business in the city of Washington. Said Mr. Maynard, Mr. Gray was an intimate and valued friend of mine, but it is no disrespect to his memory to say that on some points involved in the telephone matter he was mistaken. No subject was ever so thoroughly investigated as the invention of the speaking telephone. No patent has ever been submitted to such determined assault from every direction as Bell's, and no inventor has ever been more completely vindicated.
Bell was the first inventor, and Gray was not. After Gray, the weightiest challenger who came against Bell was Professor Amos E. Dolbear of Tufts College. He, like Gray, had written a letter of applause to Bell in 1877. "'I congratulate you, sir,' he said, "'upon your very great invention, and I hope to see it supplant all forms of existing telegraphs, and that you will be successful in obtaining the wealth and honor which is your due.'" But one year later, Dullbear came to view with an opposition telephone. It was not an imitation of bells, he insisted, but an improvement upon an electrical device made by a German named Philip Rice in 1861. Thus there appeared upon the scene the so-called Rice Telephone, which was not a telephone at all in any practical sense, but which served well enough for nine years or more as a weapon to use against the bell patents.
Poor Philip Rice himself, the son of a baker in Frankfurt, Germany, Had hoped to make a telephone, but he had failed. His machine was operated by a make-and-break current, and so could not carry the infinitely delicate vibrations made by the human voice. It could transmit the pitch of a sound, but not the quality. At its best, it could carry a tune, but never at any time a spoken sentence. Rice, in his later years, realized that his machine could never be used for the transmission of conversation. And in a letter to a friend he tells of a code of signals that he has invented. Bell had once, during his three years of experimenting, made a rice machine, although at that time he had not seen one.
But he soon threw it aside as of no practical value. As a teacher of acoustics, Bell knew that the one indispensable requirement of a telephone is that it shall transmit the whole of a sound, and not merely the pitch of it. Such scientists as Lord Kelvin, Joseph Henry, and Edison had seen the little rice instrument years before Bell invented the telephone, but they regarded it as a mere musical toy. It was not in any sense a speaking telephone, said Lord Kelvin. And Edison, when trying to put the rice machine in the most favorable light, admitted humorously that when he used a rice transmitter he generally knew what was coming. And knowing what was coming, even a rice transmitter, pure and simple, reproduces sounds which seem almost like that which was being transmitted, but when the man at the other end did not know what was coming, it was very seldom that any word was recognized.
In the course of the Dolbear lawsuit, a rice machine was brought into court and created much amusement. It was able to squeak, but not to speak. Experts and professors wrestled with it in vain. It refused to transmit one intelligible sentence. It can speak, but it won't, explained one of Dolbear's lawyers. It is now generally known that while a rice machine, when clogged and out of order, would transmit a word or two in an imperfect way, it was built on wrong lines. It was no more a telephone than a wagon is a sleigh. Even though it is possible to chain the wheels and make them slide for a foot or two, said Judge Lowell, in rendering his famous decision, a century of rice would never have produced a speaking telephone by mere improvement of construction.
It was left for Bell to discover that the failure was due not to workmanship, but to the principle which was adopted as the basis of what had to be done. Bell discovered a new art, that of transmitting speech by electricity. And his claim is not as broad as his invention. To follow Rice is to fail, but to follow Bell is to succeed. After the victory over Dolbear, the Bell stock went soaring skywards, and the higher it went, the greater were the number of infringers and blowers of stock-bubbles. To bait the Bell company became almost a national sport. Any sort of claimant, with any sort of wild tale of prior invention, could find a speculator to support him. On they came, a motley array, some in rags, some on nags, and some in velvet gowns.
One of them claimed to have done wonders with an iron hoop and a file in 1867. A second had a marvelous table with glass legs. A third swore that he had made a telephone in 1860. But did not know what it was until he saw Bell's patent. And a fourth told a vivid story of having heard a bullfrog croak via a telegraph wire which was strung into a certain cellar in Racine in 1851. This comic opera phase came to a head in the famous Draw-Baw case, which lasted for nearly four years and filled 10,000 pages with its evidence. Having failed on Rice, the German, the opponents of Bell now brought forward an American vendor named Daniel Drawbaugh, and opened up a noisy newspaper campaign. To secure public sympathy for Drawbaugh, it was said that he had invented a complete telephone and switchboard before 1876, but was in such utter and abject poverty that he could not get himself a patent.
Five hundred witnesses were examined. And such a general turmoil was aroused that the Bell lawyers were compelled to take the attack seriously, and to fight back with every pound of ammunition they possessed. The fact about Drabaugh is that he was a mechanic in a little country village near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was ingenious, but not inventive, and loved to display his mechanical skill before the farmers and villagers. He was a subscriber to The Scientific American. And it had become the fixed habit of his life to copy other people's inventions and exhibit them as his own. He was a trailer of inventors. More than forty instances of this imitative habit were shown at the trial, and he was severely scored by the judge, who accused him of deliberately falsifying the facts.
His ruling passion of imitation, apparently, was not diminished by the loss of his telephone claims, As he came to public view again in 1908 as a trailer of Marconi. Draubois' defeat sent the Bell stock up once more and brought on a Xerxes army of opposition which called itself the Overland Company. Having learned that no one claimant could beat Bell in the courts, this company massed the losers together and came forward with a scrap basket full of patents. Several powerful capitalists undertook to pay the expenses of this adventure. Wires were strung, stock was sold, and the enterprise looked for a time so genuine that when the Bell lawyers asked for an injunction against it, they were refused.
This was as hard a blow as the Bell people received in their eleven years of litigation, and the Bell stock tumbled thirty-five points in a few days. Infringing companies sprang up like gourds in the night. And all went merrily with the promoters until the Overland Company was thrown out of court, as having no evidence except, the refuse and dregs of former cases, the heel taps found in the glasses at the end of a frolic. But even after this defeat for the claimants, the frolic was not wholly ended. They next planned to get through politics what they could not get through law. They induced the government to bring suit for the annulment of the Bell Patents. It was a bold and desperate move, and enabled the promoters of paper companies to sell stock for several years longer.
The whole dispute was reopened from Gray to Drawbaugh. Every battle was refought, and in the end, of course, the government officials learned that they were being used to pull telephone chestnuts out of the fire. The case was allowed to die a natural death, and was informally dropped in 1896. In all, the Bell Company fought out thirteen lawsuits that were of national interest and five that were carried to the Supreme Court in Washington. It fought out 587 other lawsuits of various natures, and with the exception of two trivial contract suits, it never lost a case. Its experience is an unanswerable indictment of our system of protecting inventors. No inventor had ever a clearer title than Bell.
The Patent Office itself, in 1884, made an eighteen months' investigation of all telephone patents and reported, It is to Bell that the world owes the possession of the speaking telephone. Yet his patent was continuously under fire, and never at any time secure. Stock companies whose paper capital totaled more than five hundred million dollars were organized to break it down. And from first to last, the success of the telephone was based much less upon the monopoly of patents than upon the building up of a well-organized business. Fortunately for Bell and the men who upheld him, they were defended by two master lawyers who have seldom, if ever, had an equal for teamwork and efficiency, Chauncey Smith and James J.
Storrow. These two men were marvelously well-mated. Smith was an old-fashioned attorney of the Websterian sort, dignified, ponderous, and impressive. By 1878, when he came in to defend the Little Bell Company against the towering Western Union, Smith had become the most noted patent lawyer in Boston. He was a large, thick-set man, a reminder of Benjamin Franklin, with clean-shaven face, long hair curling at the ends, frock coat, high collar, and beaver hat. Storrow, on the contrary, was a small man, quiet in manner, conversational in argument, and an encyclopedia of definite information. He was so thorough that, when he became a Bell lawyer, he first spent an entire summer at his country home in Petersham, studying the laws of physics and electricity.
He was never in the slightest degree spectacular. Only once during the eleven years of litigation Did he lose control of his temper? He was attacking the credibility of a witness whom he had put on the stand, but who had been tampered with by the opposition lawyers. "'But this man is your own witness,' protested the lawyers. "'Yes,' shouted the usually soft-spoken Storo. "'He was my witness, but now he is your liar!' The efficiency of these two men was greatly increased by a third. Thomas D. Lockwood. who was chosen by Vail in 1879 to establish a patent department. Two years before, Lockwood had heard Bell lecture in Chickering Hall, New York, and was a doubting Thomas. But a closer study of the telephone transformed him into an enthusiast.
Having a memory like a filing system, and a knack for invention, Lockwood was well fitted to create such a department. He was a man born for the place. And he has seen the number of electrical patents grow from a few hundred in 1878 to 80,000 in 1910. These three men were the defenders of the Bell patents. As Vail built up the young telephone business, they held it from being torn to shreds in an orgy of speculative competition. Smith prepared the comprehensive plan of defense. By his sagacity and experience, he was enabled to mark out the general principles upon which Bell had a right to stand. Usually he closed the case, and he was immensely effective, as he would declaim in his deep voice, "'I submit, Your Honor, that the literature of the world does not afford a passage which states how the human voice can be electrically transmitted previous to the patent of Mr.
Bell.' His death, like his life, was dramatic. He was on his feet in the courtroom, battling against an infringer, when, in the middle of a sentence, he fell to the floor, overcome by sickness and the responsibilities he had carried for twelve years. Storrow, in a different way, was fully as indispensable as Smith. It was he who built up the superstructure of the Bell Defense. He was a master of details. His brain was keen and incisive, and some of his briefs will be studied as long as the art of the telephone exists. He might fairly have been compared, in action, to a rapid-firing Gatling gun, while Smith was a hundred-ton cannon, and Lockwood was the maker of the ammunition. Smith and Starro had three main arguments that never were, and never could be, answered.
Fifty or more of the most eminent lawyers of that day Tried to demolish these arguments, and failed. The first was Bell's clear, straightforward story of how he did it, which rebuked and confounded the mob of pretenders. The second was the historical fact that the most eminent electrical scientists of Europe and America had seen Bell's telephone at the Centennial, and had declared it to be new. Not only new, but marvelous," said Tyndall. And the third was the very significant fact that no one challenged Bell's claim to be the original inventor of the telephone until his patent was seventeen months old. The patent itself, too, was a remarkable document. It was a Gibraltar of security to the Bell Company.
For eleven years it was attacked from all sides, and never dented. It covered an entire art, yet it was sustained during its whole lifetime. Printed in full, it would make ten pages of this book, but the core of it is in the last sentence. The method of and apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically by causing electrical undulations similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds. These words expressed an idea that had never been written before. It could not be evaded or overcome. There were only thirty-two words, but in six years these words represented an investment of a million dollars apiece. Now that the clamor of this great patent war has died away, it is evident that Bell received no more credit and no more reward than he deserved.
There was no telephone until he made one, and since he made one, no one has found out any other way. Hundreds of clever men have been trying for more than thirty years to outrival Bell, and yet every telephone in the world is still made on the plan that Bell discovered. No inventor who preceded Bell did more in the invention of the telephone than to help Bell indirectly, in the same way that Fra Morrow and Toscanelli helped in the discovery of America by making the map and chart that were used by Columbus. Bell was helped by his father, who taught him the laws of acoustics, by Helmholtz, who taught him the influence of magnets upon sound vibrations, by Koenig and Leon Scott, who taught him the infinite variety of these vibrations, by Dr.
Clarence J. Blake, who gave him a human ear for his experiments, and by Joseph Henry and Sir Charles Wheatstone, who encouraged him to persevere. In a still more indirect way, He was helped by Morse's invention of the telegraph, by Faraday's discovery of the phenomena of magnetic induction, by Sturgeon's first electromagnet, and by Volta's electric battery. All that scientists had achieved, from Galileo and Newton to Franklin and Simon Newcomb, helped Bell in a general way by creating a scientific atmosphere and habit of thought. But in the actual making of the telephone, There was no one with Bill or before him. He invented it first, and alone.
-
19 19 - Women as Inventors 21:56
Women as Inventors by Ida M. Tarbell.
Since 1871, the wonderful model hall in the patent office at Washington has been in charge of Mr. R. C. Gill. This gentleman, fitted for the position both by his mechanical skill and his enthusiasm, Works with rare devotion among the thousands of devices in the department. In classifying an arranging model scientifically, he exercises care and judgment. In connection with his position, Mr. Gill has done not a little special work. One piece in particular, which is still in manuscript and whose statements have never been made public, is of much value. It is the first and only record of female inventors who have obtained letters patent from the United States for their inventions. The record is complete up to December 14, 1886.
Mr. Gill gave all his leisure time for three years to the compilation of this record with no other object in view than that women, burdened by self-support, might know what others had accomplished in inventions and possibly be stimulated to efforts which would save them from overwork and poverty. Certainly he deserves kindly and hearty recognition for the service he has rendered. But what does the record show? Three things worth knowing and believing. That women have invented a large number of useful articles. That these patents are not confined to clothes and kitchen devices, as the skeptical masculine mind avers. That invention is a field in which women has large possibilities. Popular opinion contradicts all these statements.
In a late issue of this magazine, one of our noblest and best-informed advocates for more work and better wages for women, Mary Lowe Dickinson, wrote, In the field of invention, women has hardly entered upon her privileges, for only 334 patents have as yet been issued to women. Out of 22,000 issued last year, only 90 were to female inventors, and most of these are for articles of household use." Mrs. Dickinson does not make careless statements. She undoubtedly has as authority the most trustworthy figures yet published. But until Mr. Gill compiled his record, Not even the half-truth was known. What are the facts? Up to December 14, 1886, there had been granted to women by the United States letters patent for 1,935 inventions, almost six times the number usually quoted.
The first of these patents is dated 1809 and was granted Mary Keyes for a method of weaving straw with silk or thread.
In 1821, 22, 25, 28, 31, 34, and 41, Patents were taken out, one for each year. They were for hats and bonnets, stove feet, manufacture of moccasins, whitening of leghorn straw, a globe for teaching geography, a method of manufacturing textile fabric from the external fibers of milkweed, and a corset. A narrow range? True, and a small number, but quite as broad as woman's range at that period, and the number compares very favorably with her opportunities. In the 50s, 13 patents were granted. In the 60s, the number increases to 216. In 76, there were 136 granted, and in 86, up to December 14, there had been 169. With a few exceptions, the patentees have been residents of the United States. 22 in all have been granted to foreigners, including some important articles.
The first of this class was to Mary Bales of England for a paper wrapper for needles. One of the most valuable patents recently granted is to a lady of Berlin, Germany, for a pocket sewing machine. Before Letters' patent were taken out in this country, she had received them from five European countries. Bare numbers are thus sufficient to show that the field of invention is one to which the feminine mind has turned, and quite as largely, as to most other fields formerly held exclusively by men. Compare the whole number of women physicians, lawyers, or editors with the whole number of men in the same profession. And the proportion will be scarcely, if any larger, than is the proportion of patents taken out in the United States by women to the number granted men.
The clothes and kitchen argument is interesting, but scarcely as forcible as it is ordinarily accounted. For if it be true that women have patented more devices for wardrobe and household uses than in all other fields combined, it is no disparagement to her ability. An invention is an invention, whether it be for housework or millwork. And the kind of mental quality it requires is the same. It is only reasonable to expect that ingenuity will be exercised proportionately to opportunity. If the largest number of inventions in any single class belong to the industries which occupy the most of the time and thought of the majority of women, the result is what might be expected. By actual count, one-sixth of all her inventions have been granted for articles of dress.
They include numerous varieties of corsets, straps, and bands, Dress elevators, shields, love fasteners, leggings, clasps of all kinds. All important devices which do so much toward making a woman's dress compact, comfortable, and economical. Some of these articles have been great successes, and have brought the inventors comfortable fortunes. The proportion of patents for household contrivances is still larger. The favored articles seem to be dishwashers, sat iron cleaners, sewing machine attachments, churns, and cooking utensils. Many of the patents suggest pictures at once pathetic and comical. Who cannot fancy the desperation into which that woman was driven who patented a preparation for kindling fires, and what must have been her experience who devised a paste for razor-strops?
The monotony of three daily installments of soiled dishes, the annoyance of sticky irons, the wear and tear of poor machine attachments, the maddening up-and-down movement of the old-fashioned churn, The awkwardness of early stove apparatus have necessitated these inventions. What better field for a woman to exercise her ingenuity? Any article that will lighten and brighten the housewife's grind is a national blessing. The household inventions have not only always been the most needed, most profitable, and most important, they still remain so. The multiplicity of the demands of modern life calls for more scientific methods, less muscle and drudgery, More brains and skill in the kitchen. Invention must accomplish this, and who so well fitted by experience for the work, as women.
Of course, where an invention for household use is simple, practical, and reasonable in price, it sells. Mrs. Hannah V. Shaw of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, is likely to make a fortune out of a dustpan which she has patented. Such contrivances mean to the housekeeper just what a successful improvement in farming implements means to the farmer. Easier and cheaper work, and so must succeed. But how about other classes of inventions? Mr. Gill's record shows that there is no branch of industry in which woman has operated and not left proof of her mechanical skill. One of the handsomest models of the Patton Office is of a submarine telescope patented in 1845 by Sarah Mather. This is the first Patton granted by the United States for a submarine telescope.
Fire escapes appear frequently on the list. One of them is a particularly ingenious contrivance for turning a bedspring into an escape. From the dangers of water as well, they have contrived devices sufficiently practical to receive patents. In 1870, Sarah Saul patented a life preserver skirt. A lifeboat and life raft are in the list, most appropriately, for there are Ida Lewis's to manage them. Boot and shoemaking has been improved not a little by the inventions of women. Some good results are shown in mechanical devices. Conspicuous among the number is a machine for driving barrel hoops, a steam generator, a baling press, a steam and fume box, an automatic floor for elevator shafts, a rail for street railways, an electric illuminating apparatus, a railway car safety apparatus, packing for piston rods, car coupling, electric battery, locomotive wheels, materials for packing journals and bearings, Machine for drilling gun stocks.
A stock car, an apparatus for destroying vegetation on railways. Another for removing snow from the tracks. A non-inductive electric cable, an apparatus for raising sunken vessels. A dredging machine.
Some of these contrivances are very ingenious. For example, take Miss Montgomery's improvement in locomotive wheels. The invention consists in substituting a curved, corrugated beam to the periphery of the wheel instead of the usual fellies of wood or other material. As in the iron wheels of locomotives and in applying a tire of iron or steel with ribs or tongues fitting into the grooves formed by the curved, corrugated beam. To give a certain elasticity to the wheel, where this may be desirable, a sheet of India rubber is introduced. An interesting contrivance has been patented by Miss Mary Walton of New York for deadening the sound on elevated railways. Everyone familiar with elevated railways has been annoyed by the deafening noise.
Her invention consists in certain combinations of the rail, the longitudinal guards, and the cross ties with flooring and partitions, thus forming enclosures for bedding the rails in sand or like materials, which smothers the noise. And when the sand is covered with asphalt, the enclosed parts are protected from the weather. This list is sufficient to show that in mechanical work where women have never had opportunity for exercising ingenuity, and for which all training has been denied them, there has been a very respectable amount accomplished. Where anything has been done, it has been due, of course, to some accidental opportunity. Society has been quite too proper up to this point to encourage women in becoming mechanics.
A woman who possessed a mechanical bent encountered skepticism and discouragement. Her friends were troubled if, when a child, she preferred a hammer to a doll. As she grew older, she was scolded if she made kites instead of patchwork. And at a later age, she was in danger of hearing herself called unmaidenly if she showed a talent for the carpenter's bench rather than the piano. The experience of Miss Margaret Knight of Boston, who in 1871 Patented a valuable machine for making paper bags is to the point. Miss Knight once described to a friend her early experience as a mechanic. Quote, I couldn't see the scents of coddling bits of porcelain with senseless faces. The only things I wanted were a jackknife, a gimlet, and pieces of wood.
My friends were horrified. I was called a tomboy, but that made very little impression on me. I sighed sometimes because I was not like other girls, but wisely concluded that I couldn't help it, and sought further consolation from my tools. I was always making things for my brothers. Did they want anything in the line of playthings? They always said, Maddie will make them for us. I was famous for my kites, and my sleds were the envy and admiration of all the boys in town. I'm not surprised at what I've done. I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as good a chance as a boy. When Miss Knight desired to manufacture a few of her machines, she met from workmen constant skepticism of her ability to superintend the work.
It was only her persistency and the skill which they could not but respect which finally won her recognition. But how silly the popular sentiment which prevented her having as good a chance as a boy. The United States contains a goodly number of women farmers, and the thought bestowed on the business has resulted in not a few useful contrivances, notably a grain elevator, several varieties of fences, one of them a flood fence, a grain and cockle separator, a grain and malt dryer, a reaping and mowing machine, a mode of protecting fruit trees from curculio, several improvements for harness, wagons, and carriages, and a cotton picker. In dairy work, there is an excellent array, including cow milkers, milk strainers, detachable spouts for milk pails, butter tubs, churns, and the like.
That favorite out-of-door employment, beekeeping, has taxed her ingenuity not a little. Among the results are beehives, a machine for manufacturing honeycomb foundations, and a bee feeding device. The sick room has received a large number of contributions. There have been patents granted for as many as 20 medical compounds. The contrivances for hospitals include varieties of beds for the sick, medical spoons, a table and headrest for invalids, several varieties of supports, besides many queer contrivances, ingenious and perhaps useful. In art industries, some work has been done. Perhaps the invention which attracts the most attention is that by the distinguished sculptor Harriet Hosmer. It is a method of making artificial marble, patented in 1879, while Miss Hosmer was in Italy.
Two years later, a Miss Watts of Maryland also took out a patent for artificial marble. Several contrivances have been invented for firing China. Other inventions connected with artwork are for teaching drawing, for painting on velvet and oil colors, coloring photographs, and similar work. Two classes of invention in which we might reasonably expect much have very little. That is, toys and schoolroom contrivances. Not a score of patents, all told, have been issued to women for toys. We cannot conclude that women have never exercised their skill in making playthings, for there is scarcely a house that cannot show some peculiar and ingenious homemade toy. The true state of the case is that women have never patented what they have devised.
The toys include nothing particularly striking unless it be one, quote, for the production of loud explosions, unquote. Whatever could have induced a woman to patent such an arrangement is not clear. Loud explosions are about the last thing needed in playrooms. Among educational devices are numerous slates, several sets of locks, a tablet for teaching penmanship, a scholar's companion, a game of fractions, appliances for setting writing copy, a book cover, and globes. An array in no wise equal to the large amount of work women do in the schoolroom. The most interesting device in this list bears the name of the charming and helpful writer Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. Letters patent were granted to her in 1882 for the invention of a set of alphabet blocks.
Of these blocks, Mrs. Whitney writes, quote, the invention is a set of blocks from a half-inch cube to the same four inches in extension. The child builds the letters, thus learning them from construction. The invention has lain almost idle for want of any channel or agency through which it might have been thoroughly introduced. It has been warmly welcomed and approved by parents and teachers who have tested it. I am too busy in other ways to follow it up with any expenditures of time and money, but it is there to remain until called for." It must not be inferred from the above statements that one invention is the limit of a woman's power. Many women have made a business of inventing and putting their goods on the market.
Eliza Alexander of New York has taken out patents for a sewing machine, for several braiding attachments for machines, and for lawn tennis apparatus. In 63 and 64, Clarissa Britton of Michigan received letters patent for seven different articles, including a floor warmer, ambulance, boiler, Complined Boiler and Dinner Pail, Dish Drainer, Vegetable Boiler, and Lamp Burner. Variety enough to prove her ingenuity, at least. Helen Blanchard of Massachusetts has received 11 different patents. Maria Beasley of Pennsylvania has patented a variety of articles, among them the machine for driving hoops on barrels and the steam generator already mentioned. The list might be extended indefinitely. It is sufficiently long to prove the point.
The record in every particular, so much more credible than popular opinion admits, is by no means the only proof of the inventive genius of the feminine mind. One familiar with the daily life of the large number of women in this country in moderate circumstances must have observed how large a part of their comforts, adornments, and advantages they owe to their ingenuity. It is inventive genius, nothing else, that enables a woman to carry a gown down from herself It is inventive genius, which will make half the furniture of a room out of dry-goods boxes and Cretone with an enviable result. The coziest sitting rooms, the neatest wardrobes, the prettiest Christmas presents are due to the inventive faculty of women.
In many other departments of work, this faculty is conspicuous. Women who are connected with large establishments frequently make suggestions and improvements, which are worth large sums to the business. It is the habit to speak of these women as handy or full of ideas. Such women are inventors. Their work, inventions. There are good reasons why the list is not more extensive. If a woman does contrive a useful article, it is ordinarily for her own convenience. She is satisfied in meeting her own wants or doing something original. Her ingenuity usually has no higher ambition. Her life is so circumscribed that she does not see the advantages to herself and family of a patent on her device. Or it may be ignorance about securing patents, doubt about her model, the expense to be incurred, the skeptical remarks of friends, Another cause for few patents is that all training and handling tools is withheld from girls.
As a bright woman of my acquaintance, herself a partner and joint manager in a large paper mill, recently remarked, quote, When they do possess mechanical skill, it has to be picked up. It cannot be urged against them that they have no deftness. Every model they have put on the shelves of the Patent Office proves their skill. Many a housewife is her own carpenter, locksmith, and tinner. If she can learn to split her own kindling wood, she can learn to handle a saw and hammer. After a patent has been secured, a work must follow from which many women shrink. It is putting the article on the market. When one has influential friends, they may assist her. When she has money, it is not difficult to secure competent persons to manage her business.
If she has neither, her tact, business skill, and courage must serve her. A private letter from Madame Foy of Connecticut, who has had a long experience in pushing her own inventions, gives several practical hints on this point. She writes, quote, In the first place, an invention should meet a recognized want. An article that does this and is practical will commend itself to the good sense of the people and can be easily introduced into market. A few nicely made samples assigned to the right parties will soon be disposed of, and in a short time they will be in demand and selling on their merits. In construction, an article should be so simple that designing persons and their name is Legion, will not be able to make an article which will meet the same want at less expense, and thus undersell the original inventor.
Much of the success of the business built up on my inventions is due to a strict adherence A notable case of a woman pushing an invention successfully has been given to the public recently in Madame Costin's A Signal Success, a book in which the author tells the story Of how the famous Koston Signals, the invention of her husband who died before their usefulness was fully demonstrated, were introduced to the various governments which have since adopted them. Madame Koston's perseverance, energy, and tact were unfailing in the enterprise, and her reward has been abundant. There is at present a healthier tone in society than ever before in regard to the kind of employments a woman may pursue. The world sensibly says, do whatever you can do well.
How, not what, shall decide your fitness? A woman who has inventive skill may easily find a place in which to exercise it. As opportunities for industrial education increase, there will be little opposition to girls who desire to learn the use of tools. No improvement which a woman can originate will be slighted because it comes from the hand of a woman. It only remains for her to take full possession of a field in which there is abundant opportunity for her to win great successes End of Women as Inventors by Ida M. Tarbell
-
20 20 - Women in Film Speak Their Minds (1925) 32:44
The Feminine Mind in Picture-Making by Anonymous. The Feminine Mind in Picture-Making by Anonymous.
The importance of the woman's touch in picture-making, an all-absorbing topic. Among those who responded to requests for this information were Mary Pickford, who needs no introduction, Anita Luce, regarded as one of the finest script builders and title writers in the business, Jane Murphan, whose productions with strong heart placed her definitely in an important place, Marion Fairfax, Another important centerist and expert in building productions. Clara Beringer, long in an important post with famous players. Josephine Lovett Robertson, wife of John Robertson, the director, who works with him on all his scripts. Eve Unsell, another gifted centerist. Lea Baird, who has been making her own productions for some time.
And June Mathis, one of the most brilliant women in the industry.
By Mary Pickford Woman's mind has had a marked influence on motion pictures and picture-making, just as it has had on other lines of artistic endeavor. In addition to the splendid women artists of the screen, those whose minds have given us some of the greatest characterizations, there are the women writers who have written some of the finest screen stories. Personally, I believe that a man will surely write himself into his stories. Perhaps that is the reason that practically all of my outstanding pictures have been written by women, because they were better able to put into the story the qualities that I sought. Grace Miller-White, Frances Hodgson-Burnett, Kate Douglas-Wiggins, Eleanor Gates, and Eleanor Porter contributed some of my best stories.
One outstanding exception to the role was Edward J. Locke, who wrote Stella Maurice. I feel that I owe gratitude to the women whose minds have done much to advance the industry. And we should not forget, too, the wives and mothers of the directors, artists, and producers. The influence their minds have had on the industry will never be known.
By Jane Murfin Woman's mind in picture-making. I wonder if there is such a thing as the feminine mind, strictly speaking. Coleridge once said, The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous. I hope you have to look it up, too, I had. The mind which is androgynous is sexless, or rather is a mixture of the qualities of both sexes. This is the mind picture-making or any creative work needs. There are many women in the industry, but comparatively few have any hand in the actual translation of the story onto the screen, which is a pity. Neither sex should operate in the field of direction exclusively. This business is not a one-mind proposition, but the mental qualities of both men and women are absolutely essential to it.
By Anita Luce There has always been a tendency on the part of men of brains to look with contempt on women's work in the arts. This tendency has been partly overshadowed by the enthusiasm with which the general public has taken to women artists. But the tendency is there just the same, and as it is only through men of brains that a woman can achieve enduring success, it might be well to investigate whether it has a legitimate foundation. Every modern genius from Voltaire on has had his fling at woman and a woman's brain. And yet I think that no genius ever lived who did not grant to woman one or two attributes that a man can never know. This is only natural, as a woman is one step nearer to the general scheme of nature than man, and she views things from a narrower and closer angle.
The French have a word, intime, which means more than its English translation, in that it is applied as a technical term to the arts. It is to the field of the intimate that a woman should limit herself to the quick flashes of human nature that her feminine perception can catch and record so freshly. In the photoplay art, this field holds more promise than any other at present, and it will for a long time to come. Lurid melodrama and the padded multiple-reel feature have been overdone. The public is tiring, too, of the filmizations of worn-out dramas that were written years ago to please our grandparents. Audiences are taking very, very kindly to the simple story well told, and by simple I do not mean to suggest the need of a blatant moral.
Two women belong on the negative attributes, and they are by no means to be despised. Passion is positive. She can neither handle it with mastery nor paint a clear picture of it. Sentiment is negative, and no man can surpass her in its treatment. Intellect is positive. It is not her field. Intuition is negative, and it is the exclusive property of her sex. Idea is positive, aspect negative, and so on. To be a perfect success in the field of art, and to win the respect of men workers in the same field, A woman must keep to her womanhood. She must work with subjects that she knows, and she must infuse as much feminine charm into them as it is her good fortune to possess. A woman's point of view ought to put a fine and beautiful aspect on any subject.
Woman's brain will never equal man's. Heaven forbid that it should, else we would have nothing left to look up to in them. But, if a woman will use her natural powers naturally, She can do fine and enduring work. The photoplay needs her mightily at present.
By Marion Fairfax. Any mind, masculine, feminine, or neuter, is so very welcome in pictures that the gender seems of secondary importance. I think the alleged feminine touch is largely a misnomer. Much of the crudest, bloodiest melodrama that has passed across my editorial desk has been written by women, and some of the sobbiest sob-sister material has emanated from men. As a matter of fact, I know only one woman centrist who habitually specializes on the woman's point of view, and her work is not greatly in demand. On the contrary, I know three or four women whose writing is direct, honest, humorous, without a trace of the sob-sister taint, and they stand near the top of this overcrowded field.
Personally, I think that writing is one game in which being a woman is far from being a handicap. And as pictures are the universal language of mankind today, and over half of mankind is womankind, I think woman's point of view is not only valuable in pictures, but necessary. It will probably be admitted that women know more about women than do men, and our pictures are largely about woman, her home, her struggles, her love as sweetheart, wife, or mother. And our audiences are about 75% women. As for women's insight into a man's problems, the struggle of the hero towards success in the field of business, love, adventure, or ambition, she may not understand the strictly masculine phases of life of a man, but she very often understands the man.
For generations, she has helped develop and train the minds of men. as well as taking care of their bodies. Moreover, men habitually confide in women when in need either of encouragement or comfort. Women see men at their most emotional, most self-revealing moments. For countless ages, woman's very existence, certainly her safety and comfort, hinged upon her ability to please or influence men. Naturally, she has almost unconsciously made an intensive study of them. Therefore, if she is a writer at all, she should not only be able to write with insight and sympathetic understanding about women, but at least the authority of a trained observer about men. These appear to me to be fairly good reasons for using whatever we can find of feminine insight and understanding in creating or editing our pictures.
By Clara Berenger. There has been much discussion of women's place in the making of pictures, and much questioning as to why the majority of successful scenario writers have been women. It seems to me that the answer is simple. Most of the directors are men, but it takes two people to get a story into shape before the director begins to work on it. And what is more logical than for the other element of the creative work to be supplied by a woman? With a woman as writer and a man as director, you have the ideal combination of feminine and masculine psychology, combining to cover the complete psychology of the story that is to be picturized. There has never been a really fine picture directed by a woman, and the reason for this, I think, The problem is that women haven't the physical endurance necessary to stand behind the camera for the length of a shooting day.
Aside from the mental stress of directing a picture, it is hard physical work and requires generalship that is more natural to a man than to a woman. Wherever it is a matter of mere creation or brain work, a woman can take her place as readily as a man. Positions in the research department, in the wardrobe department, In the editorial department and in the various departments that feed the making of pictures are filled by women and men, which is as it should be. In a word, I believe that the only position in pictures that a woman cannot adequately fill is the position of director.
By Josephine Lovett Robertson. The question you ask I find a singularly interesting one. It seems to me that one must go a long way back for the answer, back to the beginning of creation, in fact, for it was then that, male and female, He made them, although in these days of broader education even that might sound a little arbitrary. I'm not saying anything new when I say that it is a well-known fact that there are several and distinct interests that a picture must contain in order for it to be a success from any point of view. Some of these elements come from the men concerned in the making, and others from a woman, whether she be the author, continuity writer, or in some cases, the star herself.
For instance, it is interesting to know how a man's actions appeal to a woman. Some bit of business or characterization may come up in the filming of a story that is perfectly natural from a man's point of view. But to a woman, conveys an entirely different meaning, and to her, throws the whole story out of gear. I am afraid that I'm going to be revolutionary when I say that, to me, men have a greater sense of delicacy in emotions. I believe that women are apt to be more violent in expressing emotional reactions. Not so restrained or subtle. The best simile I can use to explain my meaning is to compare us to an artist mixing colors on a palette. Women are more prone to use pure color, while men are far quieter in their choice, and consequently produce a glow, for want of a better word, that comes only from properly blended colors.
But again, a woman's greater sense of duty will almost always cause her either to do or not do a thing, which may be quite without reason to a man. And even unexplainable to herself, being entirely intuitive. This may be because of the more solid background with which women have been surrounded, if a background can be said to surround, for generations. For entertainment, women demand a hero, I think, though in real life he might bore her. For, after all, women have an incorrigible desire to mother a man, which would be impossible if he had no weaknesses. In short, I think women are more valuable, aside from acting, in a creative and advisory capacity than in the actual production, although it is difficult to lay down any hard and fast rule.
In the many pictures with which I have been connected, not only in the breadth of vision and capacity to sum up the essentials, but also in the endless details necessary, speaking personally, John was such a master of both that I am unable to generalize as to a woman's value. So much might be written, but I feel that the above briefly outlines my thoughts as to a woman's mind and pictures. Your question. By Eve Unsell. In spite of the fact that woman's curves, rather than her angles, are believed to be of more general interest to the motion picture public, It is also a fact that she may have an angle or so, especially as regards picture-making, that can be deemed worthy of serious consideration.
Women have always played, and will continue to play, a vital part in the preparation of motion pictures, for the very simple and obvious reason that at least one-half the world's population and over one-half the motion picture theater audience is made up of women. So, naturally, a woman may be conceited to know what her fellow women are most interested in—their emotions—and the way to portray, to depict, the situations and type of character that most appeal to womankind, through the medium of her own preference and her own emotions. Usually, too, a woman has a more vivid sense of color. That is, of the emotional quality that characterizes a type, and a situation and atmosphere that surrounds it.
Women's emotions, while more vehement in expression, are less complex, despite argument to the contrary, and also more primitive, which all will grant, than those of men, and so regardless of all the inhibitions of centuries of repression and tradition, The primitive is still there, not so far under the skin, either. As much alike as ever are Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's Lady. Women writers are seldom as ponderous as men writers. They have usually a lighter touch, and often a keen sense of comedy values, again flying in the face of the old saw, that they have no sense of humor. Mary Roberts Reinhart, Nina Wilcox Putnam, Carolyn Wells, Adele Rogers St. John, and a score of other women writers have long since proved the fallacy of that old tradition.
Above all things, women writers insist on sympathy and heart interest in pictures, because these qualities appeal more strongly to themselves than anything else. and they wisely believe that all other women are as intent on the romantic issues and love suspense of the photoplay as they themselves are. These are the chief reasons why women are useful, even necessary in the making of motion pictures, for the same reason that motion pictures, playing on emotion rather than reason, more successfully appeal to intuitional minds. Pictures portray plot in action and situation, rather than in words, and through feeling rather than through logic alone, hence the greater popularity of the motion picture itself with women in general than with men.
And that is, perhaps, why women experienced in motion picture studio departments may usually be relied upon to give valuable aid in determining what plots and themes and situations are more apt to be box office in their audience appeal. That is why, too, some of the most excellent and logical of well-made motion pictures Fall flat, while a cruder, more primitive, and more carelessly made picture may leap instantly into a success that will startle even its director and producer. In sifting down such cases, you will usually find that the well-made, well-cast picture, perfect in its technique though it may be, abounding in touches and bits of business showing the smart sophistication so sought after nowadays, delightful in innuendo and subtle wit, has been weighed in the balance by the mass mind of its audiences, and found lacking in its appeal to the primitive emotions, its power to grip, to move to tears or laughter, and wanting in its sympathy and heart interest, which of course includes the love suspense element.
And after ten years of writing for motion picture audiences, I can declare with some authority for so doing that heart interest, sympathy, and comedy are the three most vital essences of a moving picture's success. All the double entente, the new technique, the smart sophistication, If without a story of human beings that carry the sympathy of the spectator throughout, we'll appeal solely to a certain type of metropolitan audience, and either offend or go over the heads of the community or small-town audiences, which are, after all, more important to the box office. A woman ordinarily knows at once what will offend the finer sensibilities of other women, what will nauseate, disgust, or shock them.
and how to put over a situation necessary to a theme of regeneration that might, unless tactfully, delicately handled, become not only censorable, but most offensive to her sex. She knows, too, that even brutality may be presented in such form as to intrigue the feminine interest, and yet how easily it can be carried a little over the line so as to frighten and revolt. It is not that I am touting the woman's cleverness in saying these things about her, but her intuitional ability, her competence to judge quickly by sensing rather than reasoning. And it is this very gift that, often trusted too far, carries her to disaster, and that is why in making motion pictures especially, The balance wheel of masculine judgment is necessary to curb the often too quick conclusions of the feminine mind, and when the two are harmoniously combined, the perfect picture naturally results.
That is why teamwork is usually more successful than the one woman or one man effort. The picture that aims for the greatest popularity can be a big picture as well. It can be developed with all the logic and good craftsmanship possible, with carefully thought-out bits of business that shall tell the story more significantly than reams of titles could do. But it must have the woman's angle, as well as the man's. The appeal to the primitive emotions must be there, and when weighed in the balance with the technique and form, hard interest must top the scale. For even the most successful comedians, Chaplin. Lloyd Langdon all realized that even the hero of slapstick must capture the spectators' sympathy as well as tickle their ribs, and that point is one of the big secrets of success of these men and others like them.
Men who have succeeded in the motion picture industry have not been blind to the woman's angle. Many of them have won their original success and learned what box office means from women writers, women editors, and women assistants. Just as the women working in pictures, every one of them, owe their advancements and their education in picture technique to the men among directors and studio staffs, who have recognized their ability and helped their faltering feet into the right paths, balancing their judgment. Adding to their inspiration, giving them generous and sometimes undeserved credit for their earlier efforts. For there is no place for the feminist in motion pictures, who thinks she can write, direct, photograph, and cut her pictures alone, without the balance of the masculine viewpoint, any more than there is for the man who thinks he can win success without the aid of a woman somewhere in his organization.
Even in the hidden and dark morass of the film cutting rooms. Few women have the strength, the farsightedness, the balance, the inspirational creative ability to carry on long alone, unguided by masculine aid, the compass of man's undeniably superior logic, constructiveness, and forcefulness. There is as much need for the women in the motion picture profession to realize that none of them can achieve their greatest success alone, as there is necessity for the men who are directing to learn the same thing. So we recognize in motion pictures, too, the truth of the overworked subtitled from Hiawatha. As unto the bow the cord is, so unto the man is woman, useless, Each without the other.
My first introduction to this phrase, in connection with the motion picture industry, was just prior to taking up the writing of motion pictures seriously, and that was really the reason I was admitted into the ranks of the industry. A certain director felt he needed just that one thing to help him in his work. In his argument with the general manager, when he explained why he wanted a special writer, and that writer a woman, added to his personal staff, the general manager's reply was to the effect, What good can a woman possibly be? But if you want her, okay. She'll soon prove a nuisance, and you'll let her go. A year later, I became the same general manager's assistant. Helping him in all his productions, and the head of the scenario staff.
This was because he, too, felt through the experience of a year the value of a woman's viewpoint. There were only a few women at that time who were working in the industry. I mean, working side by side, or rather, as silent aids to the directors and production heads. Somehow these men prospered and succeeded in quite a remarkable way, outstripping most of the others, and it was half-heartedly acknowledged throughout the industry that a woman could do something to aid in the great development of the motion-picture business. And why? The question has often been asked. First, because in the scenario field, where stories are formed, And the chrysalis of an idea becomes a great motion picture that is expected to appeal to millions of people throughout the country, and of those millions, the hand that rocks the cradle is the ruling spirit.
Women must be pleased, and a woman understands the inner workings of a woman's brain better than any man. Men may think they do, but many men have met their waterloo And so women seemed to succeed in the careful, fine, detail work of scenario writing. Added to the scenario writer in the studio is the woman technical or art director and set dresser. Again the reason. They understand the decoration of the home, the setting of tables, the arrangement of flowers. Late years I have heard many big directors say they would not attempt to shoot a set until a woman had looked it over and lent her final touch to it, just to establish the home quality. After some little time there appeared the woman's script clerk, for just the same reason, because women watch the smaller details better than men.
Again, I am quoting some eminent directors. Late years, a few women film cutters have appeared, and some excellent title writers have also come into the industry. But as yet, I have to find a woman turning a camera crank. For some reason or other, they have balked at this. Perhaps for the reason that we have never had very many world-famous women painters. And last of all, I have to mention the directorial field for women. So many women have attempted this and have given it up. I won't say have failed, because where is there a man who has directed his first picture entirely alone, without a great deal of experienced technical assistance, and made a knockout of that same first picture? When a woman takes the megaphone in her hand, the eyes of the entire industry are focused upon her.
She makes her first picture, and people say, well, it wasn't so much, and so the woman sits down and allows some man to take the megaphone away from her. But this we all know. Women in general are playing an important part in the American production of films, and America is first in the world's market, and picture-making is the fourth industry in the United States. While in Europe recently, My official position was the subject of much curiosity on the part of foreign film men. They could not quite grasp just what part a woman could play from the standpoint of an executive. And I was surprised to learn that women play little or no part in foreign production. And after thinking over the matter, reasoning out the few foreign motion pictures that have come to us, I have come to the conclusion that perhaps this may be the nigger in the woodpile.
The great cry of the American producers in their complaint against foreign motion pictures has been, wonderful spectacles, settings remarkable, scenery beautiful, but they lack the human quality that makes a motion picture commercial. Hence, from out of Europe, there comes to us a wonderful man-made motion picture spectacle, or drama, produced with great finesse, but lacking in human quality. And perhaps that same human quality lurks behind the woman's viewpoint. Women in Europe are more or less kept in the background. The man is the mouthpiece of the family, at home and abroad. While here, a woman pokes her nose into nearly everything and makes herself heard. So even when the man who does not or will not acknowledge that there is such a thing as a woman's viewpoint that is possibly commercial, it's bound to creep in anyway through the voice of the home.
And perhaps it is the same thing, the same magic something, that has made American film supreme in the world's market.
By Leah Baird. Not so very long ago, woman's place in the film industry corresponded with that allotted her, at least theoretically, and most other phases of the world's activities. She was either to furnish the decorative atmosphere or to busy herself with countless and perhaps monotonous details shifted to her shoulders from those of some male executive. A limited group of women became successful and even famous centerists, just as a few pioneer souls developed from girl law clerks into prominent attorneys or from stenographers in various industries to executive positions. In the course of time, it became a conceited fact that quite often stories came to hand which absolutely demanded the deft and delicate touch of a woman writer.
But beyond that, the sex barriers were impregnably raised. An unwritten law prohibited women from aspiring to the director's megaphone or the executive's desk, and with two or three notable exceptions, women seemed content to accept this dictum. The past year or two has witnessed a drastic and interesting change in this situation. Perhaps club women throughout America are indirectly responsible. With the establishment of better film departments in all of the units of the National Federated Women's Clubs, consideration of the probable box office results of such a step bred increased respect for what began to be known as the woman's point of view. Added responsibilities were given to the women of the industry in the belief that they could best gauge the pulse beat of women in general.
In doing this, producers acted on the theory that the larger portion of a picture audience was made up of women. Women, of course, are familiar with the demands of their own sex, but they understand even better the psychology of men. They are especially able to interpret womanhood, as man likes to envision it. In preparing a story, a woman will see that her heroine is presented in the manner best calculated to awaken the chivalry and tenderness of men. If her methods seem subtle and involved, it is because she knows that men like to be captivated, rather than captured. A picture which will please both the men and women of an audience must be carefully balanced in all its details, and surely with her knowledge of the demands of women in general, and her understanding of the pathways to masculine approbation and sympathy, Women can help to achieve this end in picture-making.
Years of experience in the film industry, in capacities which have ranged from actress to co-director of stories I have written, convince me that the best pictures result when both men and women are equally concerned in the making.
End of The Feminine Mind in Picture-Making by Anonymous