text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Greatrakes, William


text: Men and Women (Browning)/Volume 1/A Toccata of Galuppi's

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
In re Image Worldwide

Rehearing Denied April 16, 1998, Reported at: 1998 U.S. App. LEXIS 8106.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 97 C 923. George M. Marovich, Judge.

AFFIRMED.

For PARKWAY BANK & TRUST COMPANY, Appellant: Leon C. Wexler, Chicago, IL USA.

For DAVID P. LEIBOWITZ, Appellee: David P. Leibowitz, Daniel S. Follis, FREEBORN & PETERS, Chicago, IL USA.

For IMAGE WORLDWIDE, LIMITED, Debtor: Edward A. Berman, Chicago, IL USA.

Before ESCHBACH, FLAUM and EVANS, Circuit Judges.

title: In re Image Worldwide


text: Page:Lyrics of Life, Coates, 1909.djvu/16


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/216

HERE is quite a large race or class of people in America, for whom we scarcely seem to have a parallel in England. Of pure white blood, they are unknown or unrecognisable in towns; inhabit the fringe of settlements and the deep, quiet places of the country; rebellious to all labour, and pettily thievish, like the English gipsies; rustically ignorant, but with a touch of woodlore and the dexterity of the savage. Whence they came is a moot point. At the time of the war, they poured north in crowds to escape conscription; lived during summer on fruits, wild animals, and petty theft; and at the approach of winter, when these supplies failed, built great fires in the forest, and there died stoically by starvation. They are widely scattered, however, and easily recognised. Loutish, but not ill-looking, they will sit all day, swinging their legs on a field fence, the mind seemingly as devoid of all reflection as a Suffolk peasant's, careless of politics, for the most part incapable of reading, but with a rebellious vanity and a strong sense of independence.


text:
Page:Lyrics of Life, Coates, 1909.djvu/67

first the birds—so runs the gentle story

The priest of Buddha to the people told,

With only feet to bear them o'er the mould,

Hopped to and fro, nor marked the varied glory

Of days and seasons in their wondrous passing;

Saw not the wintry branches overhead

By vernal airs revived, engarlanded,

Saw not the clouds, their forms in rivers glassing,

Dreamed not of birch-tree-haunts on lovely islands

Where sunsets tarry late, as loth to go,—

Nor ever knew what winds delicious blow

From piny mountain-peaks o'er verdurous highlands.

Now here, now there, absorbed in one endeavor—

One single aim—poor birds!—the search for food,

They looked on all which aided that as good,—

Toward any larger goal aspiring never.

But came a morning, strange and unforeboded,

When from their tiny shoulders started things,

Feathered atip, which presently were wings,—

Full irksome to the birds, and heavy-loaded.


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/217

Rh Hunting is their most congenial business, or, if the occasion offers, a little amateur detection. In tracking a criminal, following a particular horse along a beaten highway, and drawing inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of those somnolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly display activity of body and finesse of mind. By their names ye may know them, the women figuring as Loveina, Larsenia, Serena, Leanna, Orreana; the men answering to Alvin, Alva, or Orion, pronounced Orrion, with the accent on the first. Whether they are indeed a race, or whether this is the form of degeneracy common to all backwoodsmen, they are at least known by a generic byword, as Poor Whites or Low-downers. I will not say that the Hanson family was Poor White, because the name savours of offence; but I may go as far as this—they were, in many points, not unsimilar to the people usually so called. Rufe himself combined two of the qualifications, for he was both a hunter and an amateur detective. It was he who pursued Russel and Dollar, the robbers of the Lake Port stage, and captured them the very morning after the exploit, while they were still sleeping in a hayfield. Russel, a drunken Scotch carpenter, was even an acquaintance of his own, and he expressed much grave commiseration for his fate. In all that he said and did, Rufe was


text:
In re Image Worldwide/Opinion of the Court

[p575] ESCHBACH, Circuit Judge.

Image Worldwide, Ltd. guaranteed loans paid to an affiliate corporation, Image Marketing, Ltd. Both corporations were owned by the same person, but only Image Marketing received funds from the loan. The Image Worldwide's bankruptcy trustee filed suit to avoid the guarantees as a fraudulent transfer, alleging that the guarantees made Image Worldwide insolvent, and that Image Worldwide did not receive reasonably equivalent value in exchange for its guarantees. The bankruptcy and district courts found in favor of the trustee. This bankruptcy appeal presents the issue of when a corporation receives reasonably equivalent value for its guarantee of an affiliates' debts. The bankruptcy court held that a guarantor must receive direct economic benefits in exchange for its guarantee in order to have received reasonably equivalent value for its guarantee. While the bankruptcy court applied an overly narrow interpretation of what may constitute reasonably equivalent value for a guarantee, the bankruptcy court did not clearly err in finding that Image Worldwide did not receive reasonably equivalent value for its guarantees. We affirm.

I. Facts
Richard Steinberg was the sole shareholder, sole officer, and sole director of Image Marketing, Ltd. (IM), an Illinois corporation incorporated in June 1991. IM was in the commercial printing business, primarily dealing in wholesale sales of music and sports merchandise. IM leased space from FCL Graphics, a printing company that did all of the printing for IM.

In 1992, IM obtained a line of credit from Parkway Bank secured by a first lien against substantially all of IM's assets (IM loan). The line of credit allowed IM to borrow against up to 70% of its eligible accounts receivable, and required IM to reduce its indebtedness to 70% of its accounts receivable in the event that its eligible accounts receivable declined. By June 1993, IM had borrowed $ 300,000 on its line of credit.

At the end of 1993, IM was several hundred thousand dollars in debt to trade creditors. So in December 1993, Steinberg incorporated a new Illinois corporation, Image Worldwide, Ltd. (IW). Steinberg was the sole shareholder, officer, and director of IW as well. IW leased the same space from [p576]  FCL as IM, used the same suppliers, and had many of the same customers. In early 1994, Steinberg liquidated IM. Parkway knew of and cooperated in the liquidation of IM. Instead of demanding that IM pay off its loan under the terms of the agreement, however, Parkway allowed Steinberg to use the money obtained from the liquidation of IM to pay down IM's trade debts. Parkway never required IM to pay off its loan, even when its accounts receivable declined to zero in 1994.

Instead, Parkway demanded that IW guarantee IM's $ 300,000 debt. IW executed the guarantee on May 27, 1994. The guarantee was secured by a first lien on substantially all of IW's assets. IW never borrowed any money from Parkway on its own. Parkway's consideration for the guarantee was its allowing IW to stay in business. Between May 27, 1994 and when IW was forced into bankruptcy, IW paid principal and interest on the loan as it became due.

Even after IM was wound down, IM still owed $ 200,000 to FCL Graphics. Parkway lent $ 200,000 to Steinberg to pay this debt (Steinberg loan). The bank paid the proceeds from this loan directly to FCL. The loan was secured by all of IW's accounts receivable. As of the date of its bankruptcy, IW had paid down $ 72,076.49 in principal and $ 26,863.45 in interest on the loan.

IW was no more successful than IM. At trial, Parkway stipulated that the guarantees made IW insolvent. In August 1995, FCL stopped doing work for IW, and filed an involuntary chapter 7 petition for bankruptcy against IW. David Leibowitz was appointed as the trustee of IW's bankruptcy estate. Over the trustee's objection, Parkway obtained relief from the automatic stay, and collected IW's accounts receivable to pay down the debts guaranteed by IW. All told, Parkway collected $ 444,507.55 from IW, including the amounts paid prior to the bankruptcy.

The trustee instituted this adversarial proceeding in July 1996 to recover the amounts transferred to Parkway. Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 544(b), the trustee charged that the transfers to Parkway were fraudulent transfers in violation of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (UFTA), 740 ILCS 160/5, because IW never received reasonably equivalent value for its guarantees to Parkway. The bankruptcy court found in favor of the trustee, and ordered Parkway to disgorge the amounts it received from IW. The district court affirmed. See Leibowitz v. Parkway Bank & Trust Co., 210 B.R. 298 (N.D. Ill. 1997). Parkway now appeals to this court, arguing that IW did receive reasonably equivalent value, and that the trustee did not meet all of the requirements of 740 ILCS 160/5.

II. Standard of Review
A bankruptcy court's findings of fact are reviewed for clear error. Fed. R. Bankr. P. 8013. Both the district court's and the bankruptcy court's legal interpretations are reviewed de novo. In re Birkenstock, 87 F.3d 947, 951 (7th Cir. 1996). Whether "reasonably equivalent value" was received in a transaction is a question of fact. Heritage Bank Tinley Park v. Steinberg (In re Grabill), 121 B.R. 983, 994 (Bankr. N.D. Ill. 1990); ''cf. In re Xonics Photochem., Inc.'', 841 F.2d 198, 202 (7th Cir. 1988) (whether or not a corporation received a benefit from a guarantee is a question of fact).

III. Analysis
The federal fraudulent transfer statute, 11 U.S.C. § 548, contains a one year statute of limitations that barred the trustee from using that section to avoid the transfer. However, under the strong-arm provision of the Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. § 544(b), the trustee can avoid any transaction of the debtor [p577]  that would be voidable by any actual unsecured creditor under state law. See In re Leonard, 125 F.3d 543, 544 (7th Cir. 1997). The trustee need not identify the creditor, so long as the unsecured creditor exists. Id. Thus, the trustee proceeded against Parkway under the constructive fraud provision of the UFTA, which states: (a) A transfer made or obligation incurred by a debtor is fraudulent as to a creditor, whether the creditor's claim arose before or after the transfer was made or the obligation was incurred, if the debtor made the transfer or incurred the obligation:. . . (2) without receiving a reasonably equivalent value in exchange for the transfer or obligation, and the debtor: (A) was engaged or was about to engage in a business or a transaction for which the remaining assets of the debtor were unreasonably small in relation to the business or transaction; or (B) intended to incur, or believed or reasonably should have believed that he would incur, debts beyond his ability to pay as they become due. 740 ILCS 160/5(a). Because Parkway has stipulated that the transaction rendered IW insolvent, the key issue in this case is whether IW, as guarantor, received reasonably equivalent value for its guarantee when the direct benefits of the transaction were received by a third party, IM. Parkway argues that its allowing IW to stay in business constituted reasonably equivalent value for IW's guarantee of IM's debt. Parkway also attempts to argue that IM and IW were the same entity.

A.
Because the UFTA is a state law, we must predict how the Illinois courts would handle Parkway's claims. The Illinois courts have not yet elaborated on what "reasonably equivalent value" is for purposes of § 160/5. One Illinois Appellate Court has stated that this is no reasonably equivalent value when there is "no or inadequate consideration," Regan v. Ivanelli, 246 Ill. App. 3d 798, 617 N.E.2d 808, 814, 187 Ill. Dec. 351 (Ill. App. Ct. 1993), but no Illinois court has defined the phrase in the context of a guarantee where the principal benefits are received by a third party. However, as its title indicates, the UFTA is a uniform act, and it derived the phrase "reasonably equivalent value" from 11 U.S.C. § 548(a)(2). ''See Bowers-Siemon Chem. Co. v. H.L. Blachford, Ltd. (In re Bowers-Siemon Chems. Co.), 139 B.R. 436, 445 (Bankr. N.D. Ill. 1992) (UFTA parallels § 548); see also'' Phillip I. Blumberg, Intragroup (Upstream, Cross-Stream, and Downstream) Guarantees Under the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, 9 Cardozo L. Rev. 685, 695-696 (1987) (UFTA was an effort to harmonize state law with the Bankruptcy Code). Thus, we can look to interpretations of "reasonably equivalent value" from § 548 cases, as well as cases from courts interpreting other states' versions of the UFTA for assistance in predicting what an Illinois court would do.

B.
The bankruptcy court determined as a matter of law that "a conveyance by a corporation for the benefit of an affiliate is not regarded as given [sic] fair consideration to the creditors of the conveying corporations," citing Rubin v. Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co., 661 F.2d 979 (2d Cir. 1981). This determination is an overly narrow statement of law, and misreads the holding of Rubin. Nevertheless, under the appropriate law, the bankruptcy court did not clearly err in ruling that the guarantees were fraudulent transfers.

1.
The transactions in question are known in corporate law lingo as an "intercorporate guarantee." These fall into three types: "upstream," "downstream," and "cross-stream." An upstream guarantee is when a subsidiary guarantees the debt of its parent; a downstream guarantee is when a parent corporation guarantees a debt of its subsidiary; a cross-stream guarantee is when a corporation guarantees the debt of an affiliate. See Jack F. Williams, The Fallacies of Contemporary Fraudulent Transfer Models as Applied to Intercorporate Guaranties: [p578]  Fraudulent Transfer Law as a Fuzzy System, 15 Cardozo L. Rev. 1403, 1419-20 (1994) [hereinafter Williams, Fallacies]. IW's guarantees in this case were cross-stream guarantees.

Intercorporate guarantees are a routine business practice, and their potential voidability creates a risk for unwary lenders. See generally Blumberg, Intragroup Guarantees; Williams, Fallacies, 15 Cardozo L. Rev. at 1418-20; Barry L. Zaretsky, Fraudulent Transfer Law as the Arbiter of Unreasonable Risk, 46 S.C. L. Rev. 1165 (1995); Scott F. Norberg, Comment, Avoidability of Intercorporate Guarantees Under Sections 548(b) and 544(b) of the Bankruptcy Code, 64 N.C. L. Rev. 1099 (1986). Intercorporate guarantees are common because they benefit both the creditor and debtor in a loan transaction. See Williams, Fallacies, 15 Cardozo L. Rev. at 1418-20; Norberg, 64 N.C. L. Rev. at 1099. Within a corporate group, some units will often have better credit ratings than others. The units which are perceived as credit risks by lenders will be either unable to obtain loans, or able to obtain a loan only at a higher interest rate. However, when the corporate group exploits the units with good credit ratings by having them guarantee the debt of the weaker unit, the weaker unit will benefit from either obtaining the loan, or getting the loan at a better rate. The creditor benefits from greater security in repayment. So between creditor and debtor, the guarantee is a win-win situation.

However, the creditors of the guarantor making a cross-stream guarantee can sometimes lose out in the transaction, because the guaranteeing corporation may not receive a direct economic benefit from the guarantee. See Rubin, 661 F.2d at 991. Should the guarantee push the guarantor into insolvency, these transactions will be scrutinized under a fraudulent transfer analysis. Fraudulent transfer law seeks to preserve assets of the estate for creditors. In re Bundles, 856 F.2d 815, 824 (7th Cir. 1988). Some courts applying traditional fraudulent transfer rules to intercorporate guarantees therefore found that the guarantor had not received reasonably equivalent value for the guarantee, because from the standpoint of the unsecured creditor, the guarantor had received no consideration for the guarantee. See Williams, Fallacies, 15 Cardozo L. Rev. at 1431-32.

However, requiring a direct flow of capital to a cross-guarantor to avoid a finding of a fraudulent transfer "is inhibitory of contemporary financing practices, which recognize that cross-guarantees are often needed because of the unequal abilities of interrelated corporate entities to collateralize loans." TeleFest, Inc. v. Vu-TV Inc., 591 F. Supp. 1368, 1379 (D. N.J. 1984). Often, these guarantees are legitimate business transactions, and not made to frustrate creditors. In recognition of this economic reality, courts have loosened the old rule that transfers primarily for the benefit of a third party invariably give no consideration to the transferor. Thus, even when there has been no direct economic benefit to a guarantor, courts performing a fraudulent transfer analysis have been increasingly willing to look at whether a guarantor received indirect benefits from the guarantee if there has been an indirect benefit. See, e.g., Xonics, 841 F.2d at 201; Rubin, 661 F.2d at 991-92; TeleFest, 591 F. Supp. at 1377-81. "One theme permeates the authorities upholding guaranty obligations: that the guaranty at issue was the result of arm's length negotiations at a time when the common enterprise was commercially viable." Williams, Fallacies, 15 Cardozo L. Rev. at 1438.

Generally, a court will not recognize an indirect benefit unless it is "fairly concrete." See Heritage Bank Tinley Park v. Steinberg (In re Grabill Corp.), 121 B.R. 983, 995 (N.D. Ill. 1990). The most straightforward indirect benefit is when the guarantor receives from the debtor some of the consideration paid to it. See Rubin, 661 F.2d at 991; Grabill, 121 B.R. at 995-96. But courts have found other economic benefits to qualify as indirect benefits. For example, in Mellon Bank, N.A. v. Metro Communications, Inc., 945 F.2d 635, 646-48 (3d Cir. 1991), the court found reasonably equivalent value for a debtor corporation's guarantee of an affiliate's debt when the loan strengthened the corporate group as a whole, so that the guarantor corporation would benefit from "synergy" [p579]  within the corporate group. The Mellon court stated that indirect benefits included intangibles such as goodwill, id. at 647, and an increased ability to borrow working capital. Id. at 648. TeleFest indicated that indirect benefits to a guarantor exist when "the transaction of which the guaranty is a part may safeguard an important source of supply, or an important customer for the guarantor. Or substantial indirect benefits may result from the general relationship" between affiliates. 591 F. Supp. at 1380-81 (quoting Normandin, "Intercorporate Guarantees and Fraudulent Conveyances," in Personal Property Security Interests Under the Revised UCC 361, 370- 71 (1977)). In Xonics, we recognized the ability of a smaller company to use the distribution system of a larger affiliate as an indirect benefit as well. See Xonics, 841 F.2d at 202.

2.
The trustee argues that "transfers made or obligations incurred for the benefit of third parties do not furnish reasonably equivalent value to the debtor, unless the debtor's net worth is unaffected by the transfer because it received a direct economic benefit from the transfers." However, the cases cited by the trustee do not support this argument. Two of the three cases explicitly acknowledge that indirect benefits can constitute reasonably equivalent value. The quoted language itself is a paraphrase of Coan v. Stone Oil Co. (In re Globe Tanker Services, Inc.), 151 B.R. 23, 24-25 (Bankr. D. Conn. 1993) that conveniently omits the court's reference to indirect benefits. The actual quote says "unless the debtor's net worth is unaffected because it received a direct or indirect economic benefit from the transfer." Id. at 25 (emphasis added). See also In re Augie/Restivo Baking Co., Ltd., 87 B.R. 242, 247 (Bankr. E.D.N.Y. 1988) (quoting Rubin indirect benefit language). The third case, while not explicitly referring to the indirect benefit rule, does indicate that when consideration indirectly flows to the transferor, a transfer for the benefit of a third party may not be a fraudulent transfer. See Murray v. Prescott, Ball & Turben, Inc. (In re Chicago, Mo. & Western Ry. Co.), 124 B.R. 769, 773 (Bankr. N.D. Ill. 1991).

The case which the trustee most relies upon to support his argument that a guarantee of a third party's debt is not reasonably equivalent value is Osage Crude Oil Purchasing, Inc. v. Osage Oil & Transp., Inc. (In re Osage Crude Oil Purchasing, Inc.), 103 B.R. 256 (Bankr. N.D. Okla. 1989). However, the reasoning of Osage Crude is unpersuasive. In Osage, Osage Oil and Transportation (Transportation) set up a subsidiary, Osage Crude (Crude), to handle part of Transportation's business. Crude was a separate corporation, although the directors and officers of the two companies were the same people. When Transportation subsequently refinanced some of its loans, Crude guaranteed the refinanced loans with substantially all of its assets. The payment of obligations under the loan drove Crude to file for bankruptcy, and the court found that the guarantee was a fraudulent conveyance under the Uniform Fraudulent Conveyances Act. In determining whether or not the guarantee was fraudulent, the Osage court looked only at the direct benefits accruing to Crude under the guarantee. Osage relies heavily on Rubin as support for its view, but the Osage court ignored Rubin's discussion of indirect benefits. This complete disregard of indirect benefits places Osage outside the mainstream of recent authority. See Williams, Fallacies, 15 Cardozo L. Rev. at 1432 ("The weight of recent authority acknowledges that indirect benefits received by a debtor for guaranteeing the payment of a third party's debt may constitute a reasonably equivalent value."). While the indirect benefits received by Crude may not have been reasonably equivalent to the value it gave up pursuant to the guarantee, the absence of any discussion of the subject in the opinion limits Osage's persuasiveness. We believe that indirect benefits may be considered as part of the inquiry into reasonably equivalent value in a transaction.

3.
However, in order to prevail, Parkway must show that the bankruptcy court clearly erred in finding that no consideration or reasonably equivalent value were given in [p580]  exchange for the guarantee. Parkway argues that its allowing IW to stay in business constituted reasonably equivalent value for the guarantee. The trustee, relying on Leonard v. Norman Vinitsky Residuary Trust (In re Jolly's Inc.), 188 B.R. 832 (Bankr. D. Minn. 1995), counters that allowing the guarantor to stay in business can never be reasonably equivalent value for the guarantee of a third party's debt. Jolly's does not support this broad proposition.

Jolly's involved the guarantee by a wholly owned subsidiary of its parent company's debt. The parent company (SEI) acquired Jolly's in a leveraged buyout (LBO). The debt SEI incurred in the acquisition of Jolly's was secured by the stock of Jolly's, as well as substantially all the assets of Jolly's. When Jolly's was involuntarily forced into bankruptcy, the defendants argued that the reasonably equivalent value for this guarantee was "the opportunity to continue to carry on business, relieved of the immediate threat of foreclosure by [the secured creditor]." Id. at 843. While the Jolly's court did find that this was inadequate value in that case, its analysis does not extend beyond the LBO context. Indeed, other courts have noted the uniqueness of the LBO: The effect of an LBO is that a corporation's shareholders are replaced by secured creditors. Put simply, stockholders' equity is supplanted by corporate debt. The level of risk facing the newly structured corporation rises significantly due to the increased debt to equity ratio. This added risk is borne primarily by the unsecured creditors, those who will most likely not be paid in the event of bankruptcy. See Mellon, 945 F.2d at 645-46.

The Jolly's court reasoned that the interests of the acquirer and the target company diverge markedly after an LBO because of the unusually low shareholder equity. See Jolly's, 188 B.R. at 843- 45. The court explicitly noted that its reasoning was not generally applicable: For the particularized fraudulent transfer analysis required here, the benefit, if any, derived by the Debtor has to be determined with reference to its effect on the Debtor's own creditors. In a very real way, the law made the Debtor's interests in connection with the LBO coincident with the interests of its creditors. When the pledge was made, those creditors had a higher claim to the Debtor's resources under law than did SEI, its shareholder. For the purposes of this proceeding, the Debtor must be deemed to have had an overriding interest in seeing that its own creditors were paid. Id. at 844 (emphasis added). Thus, while a subsidiary may have a greater interest in paying its creditors than in surviving as a going concern after an LBO, the Jolly's analysis does not apply outside of the LBO context.

Even so, Parkway fails to show that IW received reasonably equivalent value for the IM loan. We agree with the bankruptcy court that there was no consideration for the guarantee of the IM loan. In this case, prior to IW's signing the guarantee to repay IM loan, Parkway had no claim against IW because IW had never dealt with Parkway. Parkway might have had a claim against IM or Steinberg (though this is questionable, given that uncontroverted testimony at trial showed that Parkway was aware of and cooperated in the liquidation of IM), but Parkway could not have attacked IW for the winding down of IM. While Parkway might have decided not to exercise its rights against IM under the IM loan, under Illinois law, forbearance is sufficient consideration for a guarantee only when it is pursuant to an agreement to forbear. ''City Nat. Bank of Hoopeston v. Russell,'' 246 Ill. App. 3d 302, 615 N.E.2d 1308, 1312, 186 Ill. Dec. 251 (Ill. App. Ct. 1993). While an agreement to forbear need not be express, the bank did not allege that such an agreement existed. Even if it had, reasonably equivalent value is something more than consideration to support a contract, see Xonics, 841 F.2d at 202; Rubin, 661 F.2d at 991, and in the absence of countervailing factors, such an agreement would not likely meet the higher standard.

Parkway argues in its brief that IW "wrongfully appropriated" IM's receivables. However, the evidence adduced at trial shows that when IM was wound down, Steinberg used the proceeds to pay off trade [p581]  creditors of IM. Paying off IM's creditors may have given IW an indirect benefit, since IW generally dealt with the same suppliers as IM, but it does not constitute "appropriation" of IM's property. The bankruptcy court's finding that IM's receivables were used to pay down IM's trade debts was not clearly erroneous.

4.
The Steinberg loan presents a much closer case, because IW may have received an indirect benefit from this guarantee. FCL Graphics was IW's printer, and thus its most important supplier. FCL also allowed IM and IW to operate their business on FCL's premises. At trial, Steinberg testified as follows about the benefits to IW from the Steinberg loan: Q: What, if any, benefit was there to Image Worldwide for you to pay FCL Graphics $ 200,000? . . . A: It was allowed to continue doing business remaining on FCL's premises and having FCL as a supplier. Q: Is it your testimony that if you hadn't paid FCL the $ 200,000, it would have put Image Worldwide out of business? A: Yes. Q: It would have moved Image Worldwide off the premises? A: Yes. Q: It would not have supplied product to Image Worldwide? A: Yes. Transcript at 44-45, Leibowitz v. Parkway Bank & Trust Co., 210 B.R. 298 (Bankr. N.D. Ill. 1997) (No. 97 C 923). If the Steinberg loan had not been made to pay off IM's debt to FCL, FCL Graphics clearly posed a substantial threat to IW because of its ability to evict IW and discontinue providing services to IW. TeleFest states that: [Some courts have] rationalized upholding various transfers against fraudulent conveyance challenges by finding that sufficient consideration passed to the transferor because an opportunity had been given to it to avoid bankruptcy through the strengthening of an affiliated corporation that received the benefit of the transfer. Such an approach seems indisputably proper when a weak but still solvent entity is rendered insolvent only because of the inclusion of the guaranty on the liability side of the balance sheet. This permits the analysis to focus upon economic reality in the appropriate factual context without rewarding legal laxity or inflexibly ignoring real benefits merely because they have no place on the company's balance sheet. TeleFest, 591 F. Supp. at 1379 (quoting Rosenberg, Intercorporate Guaranties and the Law of Fraudulent Conveyances: Lender Beware, 125 U. Pa. L. Rev. 235, 245-46). Under the broad reading of the indirect benefit doctrine laid down in cases like TeleFest, IW received an indirect benefit from the payment of the Steinberg loan because the loan kept FCL Graphics from kicking Steinberg and his companies off of FCL's property, and from refusing to do business with Steinberg. True, the balance sheet showed that IW was insolvent after taking on the IM loan and the Steinberg loan, but IW was not finished as a going concern, as IW was able to remain in business for 17 months after guaranteeing the Steinberg loan.

On the other hand, the circumstances of this case do not fit the circumstances when indirect benefits from a guarantee are found to constitute reasonably equivalent value. As indicated above, courts that uphold cross-stream guarantees generally do so when the transaction strengthens the viability of the corporate group. In this case, though, there were not two functioning corporations that benefitted mutually from the loan. By the time IW guaranteed the Steinberg loan, IM had been wound down. Even though it was not officially dissolved, the company had been liquidated and was inactive. IW became insolvent to pay an inactive affiliate's debts. Indeed, while IW was able to timely pay the bank pursuant to the loans for a time after guaranteeing the loans, IW eventually fell behind in payments to trade creditors just like IM had. In effect, by paying off IM's debts, IW kept IM out of bankruptcy by bankrupting itself. This shift of risk from the creditors of the debtor to the creditors of the guarantor is exactly the situation that [p582]  fraudulent transfer law seeks to avoid when applied to guarantees. See Rubin, 661 F.2d at 991. Thus, while IW received an indirect benefit from the transaction, it did not receive reasonably equivalent value.

C.
Parkway makes two further arguments that were rejected by the district court because they were not argued to the bankruptcy court. Arguments not presented to the bankruptcy court are waived on appeal. See In re Bero, 110 F.3d 462, 466 (7th Cir. 1997). First, Parkway argues that Illinois law requires that an unsatisfied pretransfer creditor exist in order to pursue a fraudulent transfer action. Even if this argument had been presented to the bankruptcy court, it would have been frivolous. The Trustee proceeded under 740 ILCS 160/5, and the requirement Parkway cites to is from 740 ILCS 160/6(a), a separate cause of action. Second, pursuant to Steel Co. v. Morgan Marshall Indus., Inc., 278 Ill. App. 3d 241, 662 N.E.2d 595, 214 Ill. Dec. 1029 (Ill. App. Ct. 1996), Parkway argues that there was a de facto merger between IM and IW, so that no independent value to IW need be shown. While Parkway did raise issues related to Steinberg's ownership of both IM and IW in the bankruptcy court, Parkway never referenced the idea of de facto merger at trial, so the district court's ruling was correct.

We therefore hold that indirect benefits to a guarantor may be considered when determining whether a corporation receives reasonably equivalent value for a guarantee. However, we do not believe that the bankruptcy court clearly erred when it found that IW did not receive reasonably equivalent value for its guarantees. Thus, the judgment of the district court is

AFFIRMED.


text: Talk:In re Image Worldwide

title: Talk:In re Image Worldwide


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/218

198 grave. I never saw him hurried. When he spoke, he took out his pipe with ceremonial deliberation, looked east and west, and then, in quiet tones and few words, stated his business or told his story. His gait was to match; it would never have surprised you if, at any step, he had turned round and walked away again, so warily and slowly, and with so much seeming hesitation did he go about. He lay long in bed in the morning—rarely, indeed, rose before noon; he loved all games, from poker to clerical croquet; and in the Toll House croquet ground I have seen him toiling at the latter with the devotion of a curate. He took an interest in education, was an active member of the local school-board, and when I was there, he had recently lost the schoolhouse key. His waggon was broken, but it never seemed to occur to him to mend it. Like all truly idle people, he had an artistic eye. He chose the print stuff for his wife's dresses, and counselled her in the making of a patchwork quilt, always, as she thought, wrongly, but to the more educated eye, always with bizarre and admirable taste—the taste of an Indian. With all this, he was a perfect, unoffending gentleman in word and act. Take his clay pipe from him, and he was fit for any society but that of fools. Quiet as he was, there burned a deep, permanent excitement in his


text:
Page:Lyrics of Life, Coates, 1909.djvu/68

 48 Impatient of the undesired burden,

They huddled on the ground, disconsolate,

While some complained reproachfully:—"Does Fate

Lay on us this new care in lieu of guerdon

"For all that we have done and borne so bravely?

Is't not enough that oft, through blight and snow,

We starve—we who from toil no respite know?"

They drooped, they pined; but said the bluebird gravely,

His pretty head with gallant air uplifting:

"This is indeed a burden which we bear—

An added burden; yet—O why despair?"—

Then, from one foot to t' other his weight shifting,

He hopped about, in valor growing bolder,

Till—for new effort new ambition brings—

He found at last that he could stretch his wings! . ..

Straightway the birds forgot the day grown colder—

Forgot the future's care, the past's privation;

And when, their fond desires fixed on high,

They knew—O happy birds!—that they could fly,—

The burden had become their exaltation!


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/219

Rh dark blue eyes; and when this grave man smiled, it was like sunshine in a shady place.

Mrs. Hanson (née, if you please, Lovelands) was more commonplace than her lord. She was a comely woman, too, plump, fair-coloured, with wonderful white teeth; and in her print dresses (chosen by Rufe) and with a large sun-bonnet shading her valued complexion, made, I assure you, a very agreeable figure. But she was on the surface, what there was of her, out-spoken and loud-spoken. Her noisy laughter had none of the charm of one of Hanson's rare, slow-spreading smiles; there was no reticence, no mystery, no manner about the woman: she was a first-class dairymaid, but her husband was an unknown quantity between the savage and the nobleman. She was often in and out with us, merry, and healthy, and fair; he came far seldomer—only, indeed, when there was business, or now and again, to pay a visit of ceremony, brushed up for the occasion, with his wife on his arm, and a clean clay pipe in his teeth. These visits, in our forest state, had quite the air of an event, and turned our red cañon into a salon. Such was the pair who ruled in the old Silverado Hotel, among the windy trees, on the mountain shoulder overlooking the whole length of Napa Valley, as the man aloft looks down on the ship's


text:
Page:Lyrics of Life, Coates, 1909.djvu/79

the blue, cloudless heaven

A single star,

Lone torch and lamp of even,

Burning afar;

Not with the radiance tender

Of other stars,

But with insistent splendor,—

Celestial Mars!

Above the summits hoary

Of ancient hills,

It yet pours out a glory

On lakes and rills,

As when Selene passes

Across the night

And her fair image glasses,

Leaving its light.

Strange planet! Thou dost awe me,

As by a spell;

Thou dost uplift and draw me

Where thou dost dwell!


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/220

200 deck. There they kept house, with sundry horses and fowls, and a family of sons, Daniel Webster, and I think George Washington, among the number. Nor did they want visitors. An old gentleman, of singular stolidity, and called Breedlove—I think he had crossed the plains in the same caravan with Rufe—housed with them for awhile during our stay; and they had besides a permanent lodger, in the form of Mrs. Hanson's brother, Irvine Lovelands. I spell Irvine by guess; for I could get no information on the subject, just as I could never find out, in spite of many inquiries, whether or not Rufe was a contraction for Rufus. They were all cheerfully at sea about their names in that generation. And this is surely the more notable where the names are all so strange, and even the family names appear to have been coined. At one time, at least, the ancestors of all these Alvins and Alvas, Loveinas, Lovelands, and Breedloves, must have taken serious council and found a certain poetry in these denominations; that must have been, then, their form of literature. But still times change; and their next descendants, the George Washingtons and Daniel Websters, will at least be clear upon the point. And anyway, and however his name should be spelt, this Irvine Lovelands was the most unmitigated Caliban I ever knew.


text:
Page:Lyrics of Life, Coates, 1909.djvu/80

 60 Thy mysteries to capture

Let others guess;

Mine—mine to feel with rapture

Thy beauteousness.


text:
The theory of electrons and the propagation of light

The Theory of Electrons and the Propagation of Light

When Professor Zeeman and I received the news of the great honour of the high distinction awarded to us, we immediately began to consider how we could best divide our roles with respect to our addresses. Professor Zeeman was first to have described the phenomenon discovered by him, given the explanation of it, and given an outline of his later experimental work. My task should have been to consider rather more deeply our present-day knowledge of electricity, in particular the so-called electron theory.

I am more sorry than I can say that Professor Zeeman has been prevented by illness from undertaking the journey to Stockholm, and that therefore you will now only be able to hear the second half of our programme. I hope you will excuse me if under these circumstances I say only a little about the main theme, Zeeman's fine discovery. A short description of it, however, might well precede my further thoughts.

As is well known to you, Faraday even in his day discovered that magnetic forces can have an effect on the propagation of light. He showed in fact that in suitable conditions the vibrations of a beam of polarized light can be made to rotate by such forces. Many years later Kerr found that such a beam of light also undergoes similar changes when it is simply reflected from the polished pole of a magnet. However, it remained for Zeeman's talent to show that a magnetic field affects not only the propagation and reflection of light but also the processes in which the beam of light originates, that is to say that the rays emitted by a light source assume different properties if this source is placed in the gap between a magnetic north and south pole. The difference is shown in the spectral resolution of the light, when one is working with the type of light source whose spectrum consists of single bright lines - that is, with a coloured flame, an electrical spark, or a Geissler tube. To have a specific case before your eyes, imagine that my hands are the two poles, only much closer together than I am holding them now, and that the light source is between these poles, that is to say in the space immediately in front of me. Now if the spectrum of the light which shines on a point directly opposite me is investigated, there can be observed, instead of a single spectral line such as can be seen under normal circumstances, a three-fold line, or triplet, whose components admittedly are separated from each other by a very small distance. Since each position in the spectrum corresponds to a specific frequency of light, we can also say that instead of light of one frequency the source is, under the influence of the magnetic field, emitting light of three different frequencies. If the spectrum consists of more than one line, then you can imagine that each line is resolved into a triplet. I must, however, add that the situation is not always as simple as this, and many spectral lines resolve into more than three components.

Before turning to the theory, I should like to remark that thanks to the speedy publication of research and the consequent lively exchange of views between scientists much progress must be considered as the result of a great deal of joint effort. Since it is expected of me, I am going to talk principally of my own ideas and the way in which I have come to them. I do beg of you, however, not to lose sight of the fact that many other physicists, not all of whom I can name in this short space of time, have arrived at the same or very similar conclusions.

The theory of which I am going to give an account represents the physical world as consisting of three separate things, composed of three types of building material: first ordinary tangible or ponderable matter, second electrons, and third ether. I shall have very little to say about ponderable matter, but so much the more about ether and electrons. I hope it will not be too much for your patience.

As far as the ether - that bearer of light which fills the whole universe - is concerned, after Faraday's discovery which I have already mentioned and also independently of it, many attempts were made to exploit the ether in the theory of electricity also. Edlund went so far as to identify the electric fluid with the ether, ascribing to a positively charged body an excess of ether and to a negatively charged one a deficiency of ether. He considered this medium as a liquid, subject to the Archimedean principle, and in this way succeeded in imputing all electrostatic effects to the mutual repulsion of particles of ether.

There was also a place in his theory for the electrodynamic attraction and repulsion between two metallic wires with electrical current flowing in them. Indeed, he formed a most remarkable conception of these effects. He explained them by the condition that the mutual repulsion of two particles of ether needs a certain time to be propagated from the one to the other; it was in fact an axiom with him that everything which occurs in Nature takes a certain length of time, however short this may be. This idea, which has been fully developed in our present-day views, is found also in the work of other older physicists. I need only mention Gauss, of whom we know that he did not follow this up only because he lacked a clear picture of the propagation. Such a picture, he wrote to Wilhelm Weber, would be the virtual keystone of a theory of electrodynamics.

The way pioneered by Edlund, in which the distinction between ether and electricity was completely swept aside, was incapable of leading to a satisfactory synthesis of optical and electrical phenomena. Lorenz at Copenhagen came nearer the goal. You know, however, that the true founders of our present views on this subject were Clerk Maxwell and Hertz. In that Maxwell developed further and constructed a basis for the ideas put forward by Faraday, he was the creator of the electromagnetic theory of light, which is undoubtedly well known to you in its broad outline. He taught us that light vibrations are changes of state of the same nature as electric currents. We can also say that electrical forces which change direction extremely rapidly - many billions of times a second - are present in every beam of light. If you imagine a tiny particle in the path of a sunbeam, something like the familiar dust motes in the air, only considerably smaller, and if you also imagine that this particle is electrically charged, then you must also suppose that it is set into a rapid quivering movement by the light vibrations.

Immediately after Maxwell I named Hertz, that great German physicist, who, if he had not been snatched from us too soon, would certainly have been among the very first of those whom your Academy would have considered in fulfilling your annual task. Who does not know the brilliant experiments by which he confirmed the conclusions that Maxwell had drawn from his equations? Whoever has once seen these and learnt to understand and admire them can no longer be in any doubt that the features of the electromagnetic waves to be observed in them differ from light beams only in their greater wavelength.

The result of these and other investigations into the waves propagated in the ether culminate in the realization that there exists in Nature a whole range of electromagnetic waves, which, however different their wavelengths may be, are basically all of the same nature. Beginning with Hertz's "rays of electrical force", we next come to the shortest waves caused by electromagnetic apparatus and then, after jumping a gap, to the dark thermal rays. We traverse the spectrum far into the ultraviolet range, come across another gap, and may then put X-rays, as extremely short violent electromagnetic disturbances of the ether, at the end of the range. At the beginning of the range, even before the Hertzian waves, belong the waves used in wireless telegraphy, whose propagation was established last summer from the southwest tip of England to as far as the Gulf of Finland.

Although it was principally Hertz's experiments that turned the basic idea of Maxwell's theory into the common property of all scientists, it had been possible to start earlier with some optimism on the task of applying this theory to special problems in optics. We will begin with the simple phenomenon of the refraction of light. It has been known since the time of Huygens that this is connected with the unequal rate of propagation of the beams of light in different substances. How does it come about, however, that the speed of light in solid, liquid, and gaseous substances differs from its speed in the ether of empty space, so that it has its own value for each of these ponderable substances; and how can it be explained that these values, and hence also the refractive index, vary from one colour to another?

In dealing with these questions it appeared once more, as in many other cases, that much can be retained even from a theory which has had to be abandoned. In the older theory of undulation, which considered the ether as an elastic medium, there was already talk of tiny particles contained in ponderable substances which could be set in motion by light vibrations. The explanation of the chemical and heating action of light was sought in this transmission of motion, and a theory of colour dispersion had been based on the hypothesis that transparent substances, such as glass and water, also contained particles which were set into co-vibration under the influence of a beam of light. A successor to Maxwell now has merely to translate this conception of co-vibrating particles into the language of the electromagnetic theory of light.

Now what must these particles be like if they can be moved by the pulsating electrical forces of a beam of light? The simplest and most obvious answer was: they must be electrically charged. Then they will behave in exactly the same way as the tiny charged dust motes that we spoke of before, except that the particles in glass and water must be represented, not as floating freely, but as being bound to certain equilibrium positions, about which they can vibrate.

This idea of small charged particles was otherwise by no means new; as long as 25 years ago the phenomena of electrolysis were being explained by ascribing positive charges to the metallic atoms in a solution of a salt, and negative charges to the other components of the salt molecule. This laid the foundation of modern electrochemistry, which was to develop so rapidly once Prof. Arrhenius had expressed the bold idea of progressive dissociation of the electrolyte with increasing dilution.

We will return to the propagation of light in ponderable matter. The covibrating particles must, we concluded, be electrically charged; so we can conveniently call them "electrons", the name that was introduced later by Johnstone Stoney. The exact manner in which this co-vibration takes place, and what reaction it has on the processes in the ether, could be investigated with the aid of the well-known laws of electromagnetism. The result consisted of formulae for the velocity of propagation and the refractive indices, in their dependence on the one hand on the vibration period - i.e. on the colour of the light - and on the other hand on the nature and number of the electrons.

You will forgive me if I do not quote the rather complicated equations, and only give some account of their significance. In the first place, as regards the dependence of the refractive index on vibration period - that is, colour dispersion: in the prismatic spectrum and in rainbows we see a demonstration of the fact that the electrons in glass and water possess a certain mass; consequently they do not follow the vibrations of light of different colours with the same readiness.

Secondly, if attention is focussed on the influence of the greater or smaller number of particles in a certain space an equation can be found which puts us in a position to give the approximate change in the refractive index with increasing or decreasing density of the body - thus, for example, it is possible to calculate the refractive index of water vapour from that of water. This equation agrees fairly well with the results of experiments.

When I drew up these formulae I did not know that Lorenz at Copenhagen had already arrived at exactly the same result, even though he started from different viewpoints, independent of the electromagnetic theory of light. The equation has therefore often been referred to as the formula of Lorenz and Lorentz.

This formula is accompanied by another which makes it possible to deduce the refractive index of a chemical compound from its composition, admittedly only in rough approximation as was possible earlier with the aid of certain empirical formulae.

The fact that such a connection between the refraction of light and the chemical composition does exist at all is of great importance in the electromagnetic theory of light. It shows us that the power of refraction is not one of those properties of matter which are completely transformed by the action of chemical combination. The relative positions of, and type of bond between, the atoms are not of primary importance as concerns the speed of propagation in a compound. Only the number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, etc. is of importance; each atom plays its part in the refraction of light, unaffected by the behaviour of the others. In the face of these results we find it hard to imagine that the forces which bind an electron to its equilibrium position and on the intensity of which depends the velocity of light are generated by a certain number of neighbouring atoms. We conclude rather that the electron, together with whatever it is bound to, has its place within a single atom; hence, electrons are smaller than atoms.

Permit me now to draw your attention to the ether. Since we learnt to consider this as the transmitter not only of optical but also of electromagnetic phenomena, the problem of its nature became more pressing than ever. Must we imagine the ether as an elastic medium of very low density, composed of atoms which are very small compared with ordinary ones? Is it perhaps an incompressible, frictionless fluid, which moves in accordance with the equations of hydrodynamics, and in which therefore there may be various turbulent motions? Or must we think of it as a kind of jelly, half liquid, half solid?

Clearly, we should be nearer the answers to these questions if it were possible to experiment on the ether in the same way as on liquid or gaseous matter. If we could enclose a certain quantity of this medium in a vessel and compress it by the action of a piston, or let it flow into another vessel, we should already have achieved a great deal. That would mean displacing the ether by means of a body set in motion. Unfortunately, all the experiments undertaken on these lines have been unsuccessful; the ether always slips through our fingers. Imagine an ordinary barometer, which we tilt so that the mercury rises to the top, filling the tube completely. The ether which was originally above the mercury must be somewhere; it must have either passed through the glass or been absorbed into the metal, and that without any force that we can measure having acted upon it. Experiments of this type show that bodies of normal dimensions, as far as we can tell, are completely permeable to the ether. Does this apply equally to much larger bodies, or could we hope to displace the ether by means of some sort of very-large, very-fast moving piston? Fortunately, Nature performs this experiment on a large scale. After all, in its annual journey round the sun the earth travels through space at a speed more than a thousand times greater than that of an express train. We might expect that in these circumstances there would be an end to the immobility of the ether; the earth would push it away in front of itself, and the ether would flow to the rear of the planet, either along its surface or at a certain distance from it, so as to occupy the space which the earth has just vacated. Astronomical observation of the positions of the heavenly bodies gives a sharp means of determining whether this is in fact the case; movements of the ether would assuredly influence the course of the beams of light in some way.

Once again we get a negative answer to our question whether the ether moves. The direction in which we observe a star certainly differs from the true direction as a result of the movement of the earth - this is the so-called aberration of light. However, by far the simplest explanation of this phenomenon is to assume that the whole earth is completely permeable to the ether and can move through it without dragging it at all. This hypothesis was first expressed by Fresnel and can hardly be contested at present.

If we wish to give an account of the significance of this result, we have one more thing to consider. Thanks to the investigations of Van der Waals and other physicists, we know fairly accurately how great a part of the space occupied by a body is in fact filled by its molecules. In fairly dense substances this fraction is so large that we have difficulty in imagining the earth to be of such loose molecular structure that the ether can flow almost completely freely through the spaces between the molecules. Rather are we constrained to take the view that each individual molecule is permeable. The simplest thing is to suggest further that the same is true of each atom, and this leads us to the idea that an atom is in the last resort some sort of local modification of the omnipresent ether, a modification which can shift from place to place without the medium itself altering its position. Having reached this point, we can consider the ether as a substance of a completely distinctive nature, completely different from all ponderable matter. With regard to its inner constitution, in the present state of our knowledge it is very difficult for us to give an adequate picture of it.

I hardly need to mention that, quite apart from this question of constitution, it will always be important to come to a closer understanding of the transmission of apparent distant actions through the ether by demonstrating how a liquid, for example, can produce similar effects. Here I am thinking in particular of the experiments of Prof. Bjerknes in Christiania on transmitted hydrodynamic forces and of his imitation of electrical phenomena with pulsating spheres.

I come now to an important question which is very closely connected with the immobility of the ether. You know that in the determination of the velocity of sound in the open air, the effect of the wind makes itself felt. If this is blowing towards the observer, the required quantity will increase with the wind speed, and with the wind in the opposite direction the figure will be reduced by the same amount. If, then, a moving transparent body, such as flowing water, carries along with it in its entirety the ether it contains, then optical phenomena should behave in much the same way as the acoustical phenomena in these experiments. Consider for example the case in which water is flowing along a tube and a beam of light is propagated within this water in the direction of flow. If everything that is involved in the light vibrations is subject to the flowing movement, then the propagation of light in the flowing water will in relation to the latter behave in exactly the same way as in still water. The velocity of propagation relative to the wall of the tube can be found by adding the velocity of propagation in the water to the rate of flow of the water, just as, if a ball is rolling along the deck of a ship in the direction in which it is travelling, the ball moves relative to an observer on the shore at the sum of two speeds - the speed of the ship and the speed at which the ball is rolling on it. According to this hypothesis the water would drag the light waves at the full rate of its own flow.

We come to a quite different conclusion if we assume, as we now must, that the ether contained in the flowing water is itself stationary. As the light is partly propagated through this ether, it is easy to see that the propagation of the light beams, for example to the right, must take place more slowly than it would if the ether itself were moving to the right. The waves are certainly carried along by the water, but only at a certain fraction of its rate of flow. Fresnel has already demonstrated the size of this fraction; it depends on the refractive index of the substance - the value for water, for example, being 0.44. By accepting this figure it is possible to explain various phenomena connected with aberration. Moreover, Fresnel deduced it from a theoretical standpoint which, however ingenious it may be, we can now no longer accept as valid.

In 1851 Fizeau settled the question by his famous experiment in which he compared the propagation of light in water flowing in the direction of the beam of light with its propagation in water flowing in the opposite direction. The result of these experiments, afterwards repeated with the same result by Michelson and Morley, was in complete agreement with the values assumed by Fresnel for the drag coefficient.

There now arose the question of whether it is possible to deduce this value from the new theory of light. To this end it was necessary first of all to develop a theory of electromagnetic phenomena in moving substances, with the assumption that the ether does not partake of their motion. To find a starting-point for such a theory, I once again had recourse to electrons. I was of the opinion that these must be permeable to the ether and that each must be the centre of an electric and also, when in motion, of a magnetic field. For conditions in the ether I introduced the equations which have been generally accepted since the work of Hertz and Heaviside. Finally I added certain assumptions about the force acting on an electron, as follows: this force is always due to the ether in the immediate vicinity of the electron and is therefore affected directly by the state of this ether and indirectly by the charge and velocity of the other electrons which have brought about this state. Furthermore, the force depends on the charge and speed of the particle which is being acted upon; these values determine as it were the sensitivity of the electron to the action due to the ether. In working out these ideas I used methods deriving from Maxwell and partly also relied on the work of Hertz. Thus I arrived at the drag coefficient accepted by Fresnel, and was able to explain in a fairly simple way most of the optical phenomena in moving bodies.

At the same time, a start was made on a general theory which ascribed all electromagnetic processes taking place in ponderable substances to electrons. In this theory an electrical charge is conceived as being a surplus of positive or negative electrons, but a current in a metallic wire is considered to be a genuine progression of these particles, to which is ascribed a certain mobility in conductors, whereas in non-conductors they are bound to certain equilibrium positions, about which, as has already been said, they can vibrate. In a certain sense this theory represents a return to the earlier idea that we were dealing with two electrical substances, except that now, in accordance with Maxwell's ideas, we have to do with actions which are transmitted through ether and are propagated from point to point at the velocity of light. Since the nature and manner of this transmission can be followed up in all its details, the demand that Gauss made for a theory of electrodynamics is fulfilled. I cannot spend any more time on these matters, but would like to mention that Wiechert at Göttingen and Larmor at Cambridge have produced very similar results, and that Prof. Poincaré has also contributed much to the development and evaluation of the theory.

I must also pass over many phenomena investigated in recent years, in which the concept of electrons has proved a useful guide, in order not to stray too far from the theory of the Zeeman effect.

When Prof. Zeeman made his discovery, the electron theory was complete in its main features and in a position to interpret the new phenomenon. A man who has peopled the whole world with electrons and made them covibrate with light will not scruple to assume that it is also electrons which vibrate within the particles of an incandescent substance and bring about the emission of light. An oscillating electron constitutes, as it were, a minute Hertzian vibrator; its effect on the surrounding ether is much the same as the effect we have when we take hold of the end of a stretched cord and set up the familiar motion waves in the rope by moving it to and fro. As for the force which causes a change in the vibrations in a magnetic field, this is basically the force, the manifestations of which were first observed by Oersted, when he discovered the effect of a current on a compass needle.

I will leave the explanation of triplets to Prof. Zeeman. I will confine myself to remarking that it is the negative electrons which oscillate, and that from the distance between the components into which the spectral line is resolved the ratio between the numerical value of the charge and the mass of these particles can be deduced. The results are in gratifying agreement with those which have been found in other contexts. The same or similar values for the ratio mentioned above have been found for the negative particles with which we are concerned in cathode rays.

A noteworthy aspect is the enormous size of the charge of these particles compared with their mass. A numerical example will give you some idea of this. Imagine that we had two iron spheres, each with a radius of one metre, situated ten metres apart, and that we gave each of them a surplus of our negative electrons of such a size that the mass of this surplus was the millionth part of a milligram. The spheres would then repel each other with a force equivalent to a weight of more than 80,000 kilograms and would therefore be able to reach a speed of many metres per second. I need hardly say that we are far from being able to make an experiment on this scale; we are not in a position to bring such a large number of electrons of one certain kind together on one body. If it were possible, we could carry out many interesting experiments which we can now only imagine. For instance, we could demonstrate the Zeeman effect on a simple pendulum. This can easily be made to swing in a circle, and if the bob is given an electrical charge the vertical component of the earth's magnetic field somewhat alters the period of rotation, which is increased in one direction and reduced in the other. With the charges which we have at our disposal this difference is completely imperceptible, and Prof. Zeeman himself would be unable to observe the Zeeman effect on a pendulum.

Let us now turn from the relative sizes of charge and mass to their absolute values. We can at least give an estimate of these. If we combine the results to which Zeeman's experiments lead with those which can be deduced from the colour dispersion of gases, on the hypothesis that it is the same type of electrons which is under consideration in both cases, we come to the conclusion that the charge of an electron is of the same order of size as the charge of an electrolytic ion. The mass, however, is much smaller - about one eight-hundredth part of that of a hydrogen atom. J.J. Thomson at Cambridge has confirmed this result by a completely different method. At present we are not concerned with the exact value; the principal thing is that, as we have remarked before, the electron is very small compared with the atom. The latter is a composite structure, which can contain many electrons, some mobile, some fixed; perhaps it bears electrical charges which are not concentrated at single points but distributed in some other way.

Of the other magneto-optical phenomena I will only describe one in any greater detail. Soon after Zeeman had published his discovery the Russian physicists Egorov and Georgievsky found that a sodium flame situated between the poles of an electromagnet emitted partially polarized light - i.e., in its beams vibrations in a certain direction were present with a greater intensity than vibrations in the direction perpendicular to this. To describe this phenomena to you more exactly and at the same time to make clear how it is to be explained, I ask you to imagine once more that my hands are opposing magnetic poles and that the sodium flame is placed between them. Now if you were exactly opposite me, you would observe that the vertical electrical vibrations have a greater intensity than the horizontal ones.

This is connected with the fact that the flame has a certain thickness and that the beams emitted by the back half are partly swallowed up again as they pass through the front half. In accordance with a familiar rule, this absorption effect is strongest when all the incandescent particles in the flame are vibrating with the same period. It diminishes, and the flame therefore becomes brighter, as soon as this uniformity of the period of vibration is disturbed in any way. Now the magnetic field does this, in that instead of one common period of vibration it causes several to come into play. However, the increase in illuminating power brought about in this way is restricted to the vertical vibrations in the flame that we are imagining. The horizontal vibrations of the electrons, from right to left and back again, are - it follows from the principles of the theory - not at all influenced by the magnetic field.

The conclusion therefore is that of the vibrations emitted only the vertical ones and not the horizontal ones are reinforced, which is the cause of the phenomenon we have observed.

I may add that this phenomenon is one of those magneto-optical effects which are most easily observed. The explanation given can also be put to the proof by the use of two flames instead of one, and an investigation of the absorption to which the light of the rear one is subject in the front one which has been situated between the magnetic poles.

Now that I have come to absorption, I must also consider the masterly and important theoretical considerations to which Prof. Voigt at Göttingen has been led by Zeeman's discovery. His theory differs from mine in that he always has in mind, not the emission of light, but its absorption. He explains the so-called inverse Zeeman effect - that is, the phenomenon that, when a strong white light is transmitted through the flame situated between the poles, instead of an absorption stripe we get a triplet of dark lines. On the basis of the parallelism between absorption and emission, it is possible to work back from this inverse phenomenon to the direct one.

Voigt does not refer to vibrating electrons; he is content to add appropriately chosen new terms to the equations which represent propagation in an absorbent medium. This method throws into relief the connection between the Zeeman effect and the rotation of the direction of vibration which was discovered by Faraday, and has other advantages, namely when vapours of rather high density, with correspondingly wider spectral lines, are concerned. Professor Zeeman will be able to give you an example of the effects of Voigt's theory.

However, any one who sets himself the task of drawing conclusions about the nature of the vibrations of electrons from these observations will, I think, prefer to choose the emission from very rarefied gases as an object of study. Here the radiation from the single molecules or atoms, undimmed by their effects on each other, is mirrored by the sharp lines in the spectrum. I followed this course in my later research, but came across considerable difficulties due to the fact that although the simple triplet frequently appears, in many cases there is resolution into more than three lines. This is a stumblingblock in the way of the theory. At all events it is easy to draw some general rules about the state of polarization of the light beams corresponding to the different components - i.e., the shape and direction of their vibrations, but unfortunately I have hardly got any further.

As long as we have to deal only with resolution into three components, it is sufficient explanation to assume that each incandescent atom contains a single electron which can vibrate round its equilibrium position in all directions in the same way. This simple theory however leaves us high and dry as soon as the spectral lines split into more than three components in the magnetic field. It is obvious then that we must imagine atoms of more complicated structure, which are provided with electrical charges, and the parts of which are capable of making small vibrations, rather like the parts of an elastic resonant body. When I investigated the theory of such movements, which can be done without much difficulty, it became evident that such an arbitrary system would in general show no Zeeman effect at all.

However, no mathematical theory is necessary to perceive this and to find the condition necessary to bring about such an effect. Imagine a light source which shows a Zeeman triplet under the influence of a magnetic field. The three lines naturally cannot appear unless three types of vibration with slightly different periods are present in the particles of the light source. These periods however can only be different if the directions of movement or the shapes of the path in the three cases are not the same. We will say in short that we are dealing with three different vibration patterns, each with its own frequency, in the light source.

We will now gradually reduce the intensity of the magnetic field and finally let it disappear. As long as even a weak field is present, the three lines persist, only they draw nearer each other; the three vibration patterns thus always exist, but their frequencies approach a common limiting value, the frequency of the unresolved spectral line. In this way we come to suppose that even when we observe the latter, the three patterns of movement still exist, though without distinguishing themselves from each other by their frequency as is the case in a magnetic field. It can be expressed thus: the spectral line is already three-fold before the magnetic force comes into play, and this force has nothing else to do except, as it were, to push apart the three lines which originally coincided.

The same applies to a four-, five- or six-fold line, and you may rest assured that a spectral line will never resolve into six components unless, before the magnetic field is set up, each incandescent particle can vibrate in six different ways, that is, with exactly the same frequency.

Herein lies one necessary condition which is not quite so easy to fulfil. I could add a second condition for the appearance of clear-cut components of the spectral lines, but the one I have described should suffice to show that in the further development of the theory we cannot give free rein to our imagination. Instead, we are fairly limited in the choice of hypotheses. A suitable model of a vibrating atom would be an elastic spherical shell with a uniformly distributed electrical charge, whose surface is divided by nodal lines into a greater or lesser number of fields vibrating in different directions. However, I will not linger over the phenomena which appear in such models, for I fear I might wander too far from reality along these paths.

I have tried to delineate in broad outline how much - or it would be better to say, how little - the electron theory has achieved in the explanation of the new magneto-optical phenomena. If I were now to give an account of the experimental work, it would become clear that the experiments have made more considerable advances. The research workers have already made a start on comparing the different spectral lines of a chemical element with each other, with respect to their magnetic resolution, and on investigating the connection between this resolution and the regular relationships existing in spectra.

In this country, where the father of my worthy colleague Angstrom, and Prof. Thalén have worked, and where Prof. Hasselberg continued his observations and measurements with indefatigable diligence, I hardly need to say how wonderful and rich a world these investigations into spectra have opened up to us. A world whose laws we are beginning to understand. It has become apparent that many line spectra are constructed according to a definite type; the lines are arranged in certain series, and in such a way that each series consists of lines which are distributed over the spectrum in accordance with a fairly simple law, and moreover there are relationships between the one series and the next. These relationships, in the clarification of which Prof. Rydberg and the German physicists Kayser and Runge have been particularly prominent, suggest a connection between the magnetic resolution of lines belonging to the same series. Such a connection has now in fact been confirmed. Runge and Paschen have found, in their investigation of the Zeeman effect in mercury, that all the lines of one series are resolved in exactly the same way.

I am convinced that the theory will only make significant progress when it also turns its attention not simply to one single spectral line but to all the lines of a chemical element. When once we succeed in building a theoretical foundation for the structure of spectra, then and not before then will we be able to grasp successfully the more complicated forms of the Zeeman effect. It would be better to say: in the future, research into the regular relationships in the spectra and into the Zeeman effect must go hand in hand; thus they will be able to lead some day to a theory of light emission, the achievement of which is one of the greatest aims of present-day physics.

The electron theory also presents an enormous field of study outside the realm of magneto-optical phenomena. For one thing, the free-moving electrons, with which we are concerned in cathode rays and in some types of Becquerel rays, give rise to many interesting problems. I will single out only the important question of the so-called apparent mass of these particles. A definite magnetic field in the surrounding ether - and hence also a certain amount of energy in this medium - are inextricably connected with every movement of an electron; we can therefore never set an electron in motion without simultaneously imparting energy to the ether. To do this a great amount of work is necessary, and we must employ a greater force than if it were not necessary to set up this magnetic field. Calculation shows that the force required is the same as would be needed if the mass were somewhat greater than it is in reality. In other words, if we determine the mass in the usual way from the phenomena, we get the true mass increased by an amount which we can call the apparent, or electromagnetic, mass. The two together form the effective mass which determines the phenomena.

Now the investigations published by Kaufmann and Abraham in the past year have shown that the apparent mass is by no means to be discounted. It certainly forms a considerable part of the effective mass, and there is a possibility that in the end we shall have to ascribe apparent mass only and never true mass at all to electrons.

The peculiar thing about this apparent mass is, moreover, that it is not constant, but depends on the velocity; consequently the study of the motion of the electron differs in many ways from ordinary dynamics.

It is hard to say if it will ever be possible to examine further with any success the question of the nature of an electron, which the research I have mentioned has already touched on. Meanwhile, even without ascertaining this, we can continue to test the basic assumptions of the theory in practice, and to draw from the properties of ponderable matter conclusions about the electrons it contains. The conductivity of electricity and heat by metals, thermoelectricity, permanent and temporary magnets, heat radiation and absorption, the optical, electrical and magnetic properties of crystals - all these aspects promise us a rich harvest. And even farther fields are opening up to our view. If it is true, as had been concluded from optical experiments, that the dimensions of a ponderable body undergo a slight alteration as soon as it moves through the motionless ether, we must conclude that molecular forces are transmitted through the ether in a way similar to electrical effects, and that leads to the idea that these forces are basically of an electromagnetic nature and the material particles among which they exist are composed of electrons - or, at least, the electrical charges of these particles are not something accidental but something very significant, also where molecular forces are concerned.

Thus we hope that the electron hypothesis, as it is being taken up in widely different sectors of physics, will lead to a general theory embracing many aspects of physics and also of chemistry. Perhaps it will be itself completely transformed on the long journey; however, there can hardly be any doubt that our hypotheses about the connection of widely differing phenomena with electromagnetism will prove correct, and that hence, in so far as it relates to the nature of ponderable matter, that general theory will be an electrochemical one, as Berzelius already dimly foresaw and as he tried to demonstrate with the resources at his disposal.

This is admittedly a prospect of the distant future, and the individual scientist can scarcely hope to make any significant contribution to its achievement. As far as I am concerned, I would count myself fortunate if it fell to me, encouraged and spurred on as I am by the high distinction awarded to me by your Academy, to play a modest part in the solution of the problems which next present themselves to us.

I close with the warmest thanks for the attention with which you have listened to me.


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/241

Rh of gold and blood and "Jenkins," and the "Mysteries of London," and sickening, inverted snobbery, fit to knock you down. The mention of this book reminds me of another and far racier picture of our island life. The latter parts of Rocambole are surely too sparingly consulted in the country which they celebrate. No man's education can be said to be complete, nor can he pronounce the world yet emptied of enjoyment, till he has made the acquaintance of "the Reverend Patterson, director of the Evangelical Society." To follow the evolutions of that reverend gentleman, who goes through scenes in which even Mr. Duffield would hesitate to place a bishop, is to rise to new ideas. But, alas! there was no Patterson about the Toll House. Only, alongside of "From Palace to Hovel," a sixpenny "Ouida" figured. So literature, you see, was not unrepresented. The school-ma'am had friends to stay with her, other school-ma'ams enjoying their holidays, quite a bevy of damsels. They seemed never to go out, or not beyond the veranda, but sat close in the little parlour, quietly talking or listening to the wind among the trees. Sleep dwelt in the Toll House, like a fixture: summer sleep, shallow, soft, and dreamless. A cuckoo clock, a great rarity in such a place, hooted at intervals about the echoing house; and Mr. Jennings would open his eyes for


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Mars—1907

title: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Mars—1907


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/242

222 a moment in the bar, and turn the leaf of a newspaper, and the resting school-ma'ams in the parlour would be recalled to the consciousness of their inaction. Busy Mrs. Corwin and her busy Chinaman might be heard indeed, in the penetralia, pounding dough or rattling dishes; or perhaps Rufe had called up some of the sleepers for a game of croquet, and the hollow strokes of the mallet sounded far away among the woods: but with these exceptions, it was sleep and sunshine and dust, and the wind in the pine-trees, all day long. A little before stage time, that castle of indolence awoke. The ostler threw his straw away and set to his preparations. Mr. Jennings rubbed his eyes; happy Mr. Jennings, the something he had been waiting for all day about to happen at last! The boarders gathered in the veranda, silently giving ear, and gazing down the road with shaded eyes. And as yet there was no sign for the senses, not a sound, not a tremor of the mountain road. The birds, to whom the secret of the hooting cuckoo is unknown, must have set down to instinct this premonitory bustle. And then the first of the two stages swooped upon the Toll House with a roar and in a cloud of dust; and the shock had not yet time to subside, before the second was abreast of it. Huge concerns they were, well horsed and loaded, the men in their


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/243

 Rh shirt-sleeves, the women swathed in veils, the long whip cracking like a pistol; and as they charged upon that slumbering hostelry, each shepherding a dust storm, the dead place blossomed into life and talk and clatter. This the Toll House?—with its city throng, its jostling shoulders, its infinity of instant business in the bar? The mind would not receive it! The heartfelt bustle of that hour is hardly credible; the thrill of the great shower of letters from the post-bag, the childish hope and interest with which one gazed in all these strangers' eyes. They paused there but to pass: the blue-clad China-boy, the San Francisco magnate, the mystery in the dust-coat, the secret memoirs in tweed, the ogling, well-shod lady with her troop of girls; they did but flash and go; they were hull-down for us behind life's ocean, and we but hailed their topsails on the line. Yet, out of our great solitude of four and twenty mountain hours, we thrilled to their momentary presence; gauged and divined them, loved and hated; and stood light-headed in that storm of human electricity. Yes, like Piccadilly Circus, this is also one of life's crossing-places. Here I beheld one man, already famous or infamous, a centre of pistol-shots: and another who, if not yet known to rumour, will fill a column of the Sunday paper when he comes to hang—a burly, thick-set, powerful Chinese desperado, six


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/244

224 long bristles upon either lip; redolent of whisky, playing-cards, and pistols; swaggering in the bar with the lowest assumption of the lowest European manners; rapping out blackguard English oaths in his oriental voice; and combining in one person the depravities of two races and two civilisations. For all his lust and vigour, he seemed to look cold upon me from the valley of the shadow of the gallows. He imagined a vain thing; and while he drained his cocktail, Holbein's death was at his elbow. Once, too, I fell in talk with another of these flitting strangers—like the rest, in his shirt-sleeves and all begrimed with dust—and the next minute we were discussing Paris and London, theatres and wines. To him, journeying from one human place to another, this was a trifle; but to me! No, Mr. Lillie, I have not forgotten it. And presently the city-tide was at its flood and began to ebb. Life runs in Piccadilly Circus, say, from nine to one, and then, there also, ebbs into the small hours of the echoing policeman and the lamps and stars. But the Toll House is far up stream, and near its rural springs; the bubble of the tide but touches it. Before you had yet grasped your pleasure, the horses were put to, the loud whips volleyed, and the tide was gone. North and south had the two stages vanished, the towering dust subsided in the woods; but there was still an


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/245

Rh interval before the flush had fallen on your cheeks, before the ear became once more contented with the silence, or the seven sleepers of the Toll House dozed back to their accustomed corners. Yet a little, and the ostler would swing round the great barrier across the road; and in the golden evening, that dreamy inn begin to trim its lamps and spread the board for supper. As I recall the place—the green dell below; the spires of pine; the sun-warm, scented air; that grey, gabled inn, with its faint stirrings of life amid the slumber of the mountains—I slowly awake to a sense of admiration, gratitude, and almost love. A fine place, after all, for a wasted life to doze away in—the cuckoo clock hooting of its far home country; the croquet mallets, eloquent of English lawns; the stages daily bringing news of the turbulent world away below there; and perhaps once in the summer, a salt fog pouring overhead with its tale of the Pacific.


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/246

N our rule at Silverado, there was a melancholy interregnum. The queen and the crown prince with one accord fell sick; and, as I was sick to begin with, our lone position on Mount Saint Helena was no longer tenable, and we had to hurry back to Calistoga and a cottage on the green. By that time we had begun to realise the difficulties of our position. We had found what an amount of labour it cost to support life in our red cañon; and it was the dearest desire of our hearts to get a China-boy to go along with us when we returned. We could have given him a whole house to himself, self-contained, as they say in the advertisements; and on the money question we were prepared to go far. Kong Sam Kee, the Calistoga washerman, was entrusted with the affair; and from day to day it languished on, with protestations on our part and mellifluous excuses on the part of Kong Sam Kee. At length, about half-past eight of our last evening, with the waggon ready harnessed to convey us up the grade, the washerman, with a somewhat


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Guthrie, Thomas


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Guthrie, William (1620-1665)


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/247

Rh sneering air, produced the boy. He was a handsome, gentlemanly lad, attired in rich dark blue, and shod with snowy white; but, alas! he had heard rumours of Silverado. He knew it for a lone place on the mountain-side, with no friendly wash-house near by, where he might smoke a pipe of opium o' nights with other China-boys, and lose his little earnings at the game of tan; and he first backed out for more money; and then, when that demand was satisfied, refused to come point-blank. He was wedded to his wash-houses; he had no taste for the rural life; and we must go to our mountain servantless. It must have been near half an hour before we reached that conclusion, standing in the midst of Calistoga high street under the stars, and the China-boy and Kong Sam Kee singing their pigeon English in the sweetest voices and with the most musical inflections. We were not, however, to return alone; for we brought with us Joe Strong, the painter, a most good-natured comrade and a capital hand at an omelette. I do not know in which capacity he was most valued—as a cook or a companion; and he did excellently well in both. The Kong Sam Kee negotiation had delayed us unduly; it must have been half-past nine before we left Calistoga, and night came fully ere we struck the bottom of the grade. I have never seen such a


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/248

228 night. It seemed to throw calumny in the teeth of all the painters that ever dabbled in starlight. The sky itself was of a ruddy, powerful, nameless, changing colour, dark and glossy like a serpent's back. The stars, by innumerable millions, stuck boldly forth like lamps. The milky way was bright, like a moonlit cloud; half heaven seemed milky way. The greater luminaries shone each more clearly than a winter's moon. Their light was dyed in every sort of colour—red, like fire; blue, like steel; green, like the tracks of sunset; and so sharply did each stand forth in its own lustre that there was no appearance of that flat, star-spangled arch we know so well in pictures, but all the hollow of heaven was one chaos of contesting luminaries—a hurly-burly of stars. Against this the hills and rugged treetops stood out redly dark. As we continued to advance, the lesser lights and milky ways first grew pale, and then vanished; the countless hosts of heaven dwindled in number by successive millions; those that still shone had tempered their exceeding brightness and fallen back into their customary wistful distance; and the sky declined from its first bewildering splendour into the appearance of a common night. Slowly this change proceeded, and still there was no sign of any cause. Then a whiteness like mist was thrown over the spurs of the mountain. Yet awhile, and,


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/249

Rh as we turned a corner, a great leap of silver light and net of forest shadows fell across the road and upon our wondering waggonful; and, swimming low among the trees, we beheld a strange, misshapen, waning moon, half tilted on her back. "Where are ye when the moon appears?" so the old poet sang, half taunting, to the stars, bent upon a courtly purpose.

So sings Mr. Trowbridge, with a noble inspiration. And so had the sunlight flooded that pale islet of the moon, and her lit face put out, one after another, that galaxy of stars. The wonder of the drive was over; but, by some nice conjunction of clearness in the air and fit shadow in the valley where we travelled, we had seen for a little while that brave display of the midnight heavens. It was gone, but it had been; nor shall I ever again behold the stars with the same mind. He who has seen the sea commoved with a great hurricane, thinks of it very differently from him who has seen it only in a calm. And the difference between a calm and a hurricane is not greatly more striking than that between the


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/250

230 ordinary face of night and the splendour that shone upon us in that drive. Two in our waggon knew night as she shines upon the tropics, but even that bore no comparison. The nameless colour of the sky, the hues of the star-fire, and the incredible projection of the stars themselves, starting from their orbits, so that the eye seemed to distinguish their positions in the hollow of space—these were things that we had never seen before and shall never see again. Meanwhile, in this altered night, we proceeded on our way among the scents and silence of the forest, reached the top of the grade, wound up by Hanson's, and came at last to a stand under the flying gargoyle of the chute. Sam, who had been lying back, fast asleep, with the moon on his face, got down, with the remark that it was pleasant "to be home." The waggon turned and drove away, the noise gently dying in the woods, and we clambered up the rough path, Caliban's great feat of engineering, and came home to Silverado. The moon shone in at the eastern doors and windows, and over the lumber on the platform. The one tall pine beside the ledge was steeped in silver. Away up the cañon, a wild cat welcomed us with three discordant squalls. But once we had lit a candle, and began to review our improvements, homely in either sense, and count our stores, it


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/251

Rh was wonderful what a feeling of possession and permanence grew up in the hearts of the lords of Silverado. A bed had still to be made up for Strong, and the morning's water to be fetched, with clinking pail; and as we set about these household duties, and showed off our wealth and conveniences before the stranger, and had a glass of wine, I think, in honour of our return, and trooped at length one after another up the flying bridge of plank, and lay down to sleep in our shattered, moon-pierced barrack, we were among the happiest sovereigns in the world, and certainly ruled over the most contented people. Yet, in our absence, the palace had been sacked. Wild cats, so the Hansons said, had broken in and carried off a side of bacon, a hatchet, and two knives.


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/252

O one could live at Silverado and not be curious about the story of the mine. We were surrounded by so many evidences of expense and toil, we lived so entirely in the wreck of that great enterprise, like mites in the ruins of a cheese, that the idea of the old din and bustle haunted our repose. Our own house, the forge, the dump, the chutes, the rails, the windlass, the mass of broken plant; the two tunnels, one far below in the green dell, the other on the platform where we kept our wine; the deep shaft, with the sun-glints and the water-drops; above all, the ledge, that great gaping slice out of the mountain shoulder, propped apart by wooden wedges, on whose immediate margin, high above our heads, the one tall pine precariously nodded—these stood for its greatness; while the dog-hutch, boot-jacks, old boots, old tavern bills, and the very beds that we inherited from by-gone miners, put in human touches and realised for us the story of the past. I have sat on an old sleeper, under the thick


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/253

Rh madronas near the forge, with just a look over the dump on the green world below, and seen the sun lying broad among the wreck, and heard the silence broken only by the tinkling water in the shaft, or a stir of the royal family about the battered palace, and my mind has gone back to the epoch of the Stanleys and the Chapmans, with a grand tutti of pick and drill, hammer and anvil, echoing about the cañon; the assayer hard at it in our dining-room; the carts below on the road, and their cargo of red mineral bounding and thundering down the iron chute. And now all gone—all fallen away into this sunny silence and desertion: a family of squatters dining in the assayer's office, making their beds in the big sleeping room erstwhile so crowded, keeping their wine in the tunnel that once rang with picks. But Silverado itself, although now fallen in its turn into decay, was once but a mushroom, and had succeeded to other mines and other flitting cities. Twenty years ago, away down the glen on the Lake County side there was a place, Jonestown by name, with two thousand inhabitants dwelling under canvas, and one roofed house for the sale of whisky. Round on the western side of Mount Saint Helena, there was at the same date, a second large encampment, its name, if it ever had one, lost for me. Both of these have perished, leaving not a stick


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/254

234 and scarce a memory behind them. Tide after tide of hopeful miners have thus flowed and ebbed about the mountain, coming and going, now by lone prospectors, now with a rush. Last, in order of time came Silverado, reared the big mill, in the valley, founded the town which is now represented, monumentally, by Hanson's, pierced all these slaps and shafts and tunnels, and in turn declined and died away. As to the success of Silverado in its time of being, two reports were current. According to the first, six hundred thousand dollars were taken out of that great upright seam, that still hung open above us on crazy wedges. Then the ledge pinched out, and there followed, in quest of the remainder, a great drifting and tunnelling in all directions, and a great consequent effusion of dollars, until, all parties being sick of the expense, the mine was deserted, and the town decamped. According to the second version, told me with much secrecy of manner, the whole affair, mine, mill, and town, were parts of one majestic swindle. There had never come any silver out of any portion of the mine; there was no silver to come. At midnight trains of packhorses might have been observed