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Rh Society of Jesus, wished to impress it forcibly on the minds of his sons that they were to endeavor to imitate him whose name they bear, especially in his zeal for the glory of his Father and the welfare of men. Indeed, other educators may take as their guides and ideals Spencer, or Rousseau, or Kant, or Pestalozzi, or Herbart – the Jesuits' guide and ideal is Christ. Him they are told to imitate in his devotion to his life-work, in his all-embracing zeal, in his patience and meekness. In education they behold a participation in the work of the Great Master, that work whose end and object it is to make men truly wise, good, and God-like, and thereby to lead them to true happiness. Can there be a nobler, a loftier work, a holier mission on earth?

When the teacher thus reflects on the dignity of his work, and on its necessity and utility for the individual, the family, the State and the Church, can he ever become tired and disgusted with it? Are all these considerations not most encouraging, and do they not constitute one of the rewards of the teacher? He may truly say with the sacred writer: "Wisdom I have learned without guile and communicate without envy and her riches I hide not," and again: "I have not labored for myself alone, but for all who seek discipline." Such thoughts may well inspire a man with love and enthusiasm for this profession. To the Jesuit the educational work is a labor of love. We read that in the seventeenth century, in the period

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644 of witch panic, some Protestant writers charged the Jesuits with using secret charms in order to attach the pupils to themselves and to advance them in learning. Indeed, the Jesuits as educators have a spell, and make no secret of it, but they will be glad if others wish to borrow it. This spell is nothing but ardent devotion to their work, a devotion which springs from the conviction of the importance and usefulness of their work. This devotion is their strongest motive to action and it urges them to use all the resources within their reach.

Although the teacher does not seek himself in his work, nevertheless he labors also for himself. What better compensation can there be than the thought of performing so important a work, the conviction that through his instrumentality noble characters are formed, that some youths are preserved in their innocence and others led back from evil paths on which they had trodden in their ignorance and levity? The teacher may not receive much recognition and gratitude for his efforts – youths do not reflect on the debts they owe to a zealous teacher –, nor is it this that he is looking for in his labors. However, some pupils will show their thankfulness by a lifelong affection for their former master. If one wishes to know with what reverence, devotion, and frequently with what attachment Jesuit pupils regard their teachers, let him read the biographies of Jesuit educators. The letters written by former pupils sufficiently testify to the impressions made by their religious teachers.

If one wishes to see beautiful specimens of the relation of Jesuit pupils to their teachers, he may read

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Rh the biography of Father Alexis Clerc, who left the French Navy to become a Jesuit and professor of mathematics and was shot by the Communards in Paris 1871.

But it is rather the success of his pupils over which the teacher rejoices, than their tribute of gratitude. An incident is related of the life of Father Bonifacio, a distinguished Jesuit teacher of the Old Society, who for more than forty years taught the classics. One day he was visited by his brother, a professor in a university, whom he had not seen for many years. When the professor heard that the Father had spent all the years of his life in the Society in teaching Latin and Greek to young boys, he exclaimed: "You have wasted your great talents in such inferior work! I expected to find you at least a professor of philosophy or theology. What have you done that this post is assigned to you?" Father Bonifacio quietly opened a little book, and showed him the list of hundreds of pupils whom he had taught, many of whom occupied high positions in Church or State, or in the world of business. Pointing at their names, the Father said with a pleasant smile: "The success which my pupils have achieved is to me a far sweeter reward than any honor which I might have

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646 obtained in the most celebrated university of the kingdom."

Not all teachers may have the consolation of seeing their pupils in high positions. It happens that the best efforts of a devoted teacher seem to be lost on many pupils. Even this will not discourage the religious teacher. He will remember that his model, Jesus Christ, did not reap the fruit which might have been expected from the teaching of such a Master. Not all that he sowed brought forth fruit, a hundredfold, not even thirtyfold. Some fell upon stony ground, and some other fell among the thorns, and yet he went on patiently sowing. So a teacher ought not to be disheartened if the success should not correspond with his labors. He knows that one reward is certainly in store for him, the measure of which will not be his success, but his zeal; not the fruit, but his efforts. The Great Master has promised that "whosoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water, he shall not lose his reward." What, then, may he expect, who has given the little ones of Christ not a cup of cold water, but with great patience and labor has opened to them the streams of knowledge, human and divine? Indeed, "they that instruct many to justice shall shine as stars for all eternity."

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Conclusion.

We have examined the educational system of the Jesuits in its various aspects, its history and its principles, its theory and practice, its aims and means. There are few of its principles which have not been censured by some of its opponents. But we have also seen that there is hardly one principle in it which has not been heartily recommended by most distinguished educators, Protestants as well as Catholics. We have seen that on many lines there is, at present, a decided return to what the Jesuits defended and practised all along. Can it then be said in justice that the Jesuit system is antiquated and that little can be hoped for it, and from its principles, in the improvement of education at present? Or can it be said with a modern writer that "the regulations of the Jesuit system of studies, viewed in the light of modern requirements, need not shun any comparison, and the pedagogical wisdom contained therein, is in no way antiquated"? Another writer declared a few years ago, with reference to modern school systems: "Those now living may desire that in the new much of the old may be preserved which has proved of benefit." May it not be said that much, very much, of the Jesuit system should be preserved, and that many of its principles and regulations could, with best advantage, be followed in the education of the present day? We leave

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648 it to the impartial reader to pass judgment. It is true that in our times Jesuit education is not viewed with favor by the many. To some it is too religious, too "clerical;" to others it appears old-fashioned. For this reason it is not popular; popular favor is never bestowed on what seems old. It is the novelty that attracts, and the bolder the innovations, the more captivating for the large majority of the people. This is as true now as it was 2600 years ago when old Homer sang:

And yet the novel songs are not always the best. – As to the Jesuits, they know full well that there are not many who will take the trouble to investigate thoroughly their educational system, in order to pass a fair and independent judgment on its merit, but that there are many who will content themselves with repeating the verdict passed on this system by others who were either ignorant of its true character, or were misled in their estimates by prejudice. Hence the Jesuits do not expect that the misrepresentations of their system will ever cease; their experience of three hundred years has taught them not to entertain such sanguine hopes. On the other hand, this same experience has taught them another valuable lesson, namely, not to be disheartened by the antipathy and opposition of those who do not know them, but to continue their efforts to realize, to the best of their ability, in the education of Catholic youth that which they have chosen as their motto: The greater glory of God, and the welfare of their fellow-men.

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Additions and Corrections.

'''Observations on American Histories of Education. '''

In the course of the present book we have frequently had occasion to point out that the histories of education by Painter, Seeley and Compayre are utterly untrustworthy in their account of the Jesuit system, and of Catholic education in general. It is natural to infer that in other respects they may be equally unreliable. Professor Cubberley, in his recent Syllabus of Lectures on the History of Education (New York, Macmillan, 1902), says, on page i, that the works of "Painter, Payne, and Seeley are very unsatisfactory, and are not referred to in the Syllabus." The same should have been done as regards Compayre; for his History of Pedagogy is as unsatisfactory as those mentioned before; it only assumes an air of impartiality, which makes it all the more insidious. (See the present book, pp. lo-n.) Some writers quote from the Ratio Studiorum, but the quotations are often mistranslated in such a manner that they are hardly recognizable when compared with the original. Setting aside the disastrous influence which antipathy and prejudice may have had on some writers, the following reasons may account for many errors. The Ratio Studiorum is in many respects a peculiar document,

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650 which is unintelligible unless one is acquainted with the Latin terminology of scholastic philosophy and theology, and there are exceedingly few non-Catholic writers on education who possess this knowledge. Further, numerous regulations of the Ratio are clear only when explained by other documents of the Society, which have either not been known, or not been examined by these writers. Another difficulty is to be found in the fact that the Ratio contains also the regulations for the studies of the members of the Society. Some writers have confounded rules for the novices and scholastics of the Order with regulations for the lay pupils in the colleges. Thus what is said in the Constitutions of the Society about the obedience to be rendered to Superiors by the Jesuits themselves, Mr. Painter has applied to the lay students. (Hist. of Ed., p. 170.) Evidently an entirely false impression must be produced by such confusion.

However, in most cases it is almost certain that these writers have not taken the trouble to examine the Ratio Studiorum, but have contented themselves with copying the assertions of untrustworthy secondary authorities. Raumer's History of Education seems still to be considered by some a reliable source. Even Professor Cubberley styles it "still quite valuable" (l. c.). And yet this work is altogether antiquated. Besides, in regard to Catholic education it is so biased that fair-minded Protestants have rejected many parts of it. Thus Henry Barnard, in his translation of the chapter on the Jesuit schools, says: "We omit in this place as well as towards the close of the article, several passages of Raumer's chapter on the Jesuits, in which he discusses, from the extreme Prot-

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Rh estant stand-point, the influence of the confessional, and the principles of what he calls 'Jesuitical' morality. These topics, and especially when handled in a partisan spirit, are more appropriate to a theological and controversial, than to an educational journal. The past as well as the present organization of the schools of the Jesuits, the course of instruction, the methods of teaching and discipline, are worthy of profound study by teachers and educators, who would profit by the experience of wise and learned men." (American Journal of Education, vol. V, p. 215.) However, even in the statements which Barnard accepted from Raurner, there are not a few that are incorrect. Owing to protests of Raumer, Barnard, in the VI. volume of his journal, added the passages which he had omitted in the previous translation. The misrepresentations which Raumer had borrowed from Pascal and others, need not be dwelt on here.

Nor is the estimate of the Jesuit system correct which is found in the History of Modern Education, by Samuel H. Williams, Professor of the Science and Art of Teaching, in Cornell University. The author evidently endeavored at times to be impartial, but he was not fortunate in the choice of his sources. They were evidently not the original documents. Otherwise he would not have been betrayed into such absurd statements as this: "The teachers were mostly novices of the Order, with a much smaller number of the fully professed brothers." Now, as the chapter on the "Training of the Jesuit Teacher" proves, novices are not employed in teaching, and the Jesuit is not engaged in teaching until after a training of five or six years succeeding the completion of the novitiate. The

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652 expression "fully professed brothers," also, shows that this author knows very little about Jesuit teachers.

Mr. Shoup, in his History and Science of Education, admits many good features in the Jesuit system; he expressly states that it has many points in common with American methods, but then his authorities lead him away into the old tirades of "neglecting mathematics, sciences, practical knowledge; suppressing of independent thought," etc.

We gladly acknowledge that the latest American book on the subject, Mr. Kemp's History of Education (Lippincott, 1902), is, in point of impartiality, superior to most other works. On the whole, it is free from offensive attacks on the relation of the Church to education. However, we must say that it is not free from assertions which cannot stand in the light of modern historical research. Particularly in chapter XV, many statements need considerable correction, v. g., the assertion that before the Reformation "the large majority of the people felt no need of education and took little interest in it." With this should be compared the authors from whom we quoted on p. 23 sqq. On p. 172, Mr. Kemp repeats Green's assertions about the Grammar schools founded by Henry VIII. But Mr. Arthur F. Leach has proved, from incontestable documents, that this is a pure myth, and that the statements of Green and Mullinger are a distortion of the historical facts. In his English Schools at the Reformation (Westminster, Archibald Constable, 1896), Mr. Leach says: "The records appended to this book show that close on 200 Grammar [secondary] schools existed in England before the reign of Edward VI., which were, for the most part,

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Rh abolished or crippled under him. ... It will appear, however, that these records are defective. ... three hundred Grammar schools is a moderate estimate of the number in the year 1535, when the floods of the great revolution were let. loose. Most of them were swept away either under Henry or his son; or if not swept away, they were plundered and damaged" (pp. 5-6). Of the character of these schools the author says that they were not mere "monkish" schools, but secondary schools of exactly the same type as the secondary schools of the present day. Considering the population of England at the time, there were previous to the Reformation more higher schools in England than at present; in Herefordshire, v. g., 17 higher schools for a population of 30,000! Nearly every town had a higher school. (Ib., 99-100.) Mr. Leach confesses that his researches revolutionize the traditional view of pre-Reformation schools in England, and that on this account his book was looked upon unfavorably by some people. We call attention to these facts, because they show how the current tradition has influenced men who earnestly endeavor to be impartial. Had all American writers been animated by the spirit of fair-mindedness and zeal for correct information which distinguished that excellent American educator, and first U. S. Commissioner of Education, Henry Barnard, the cause of truth and justice would have been better served in this country.

What is said on pp. 31-34 about the Brethren, must partly be corrected. Recent investigations have

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654 proved that they were not, as Raumer had represented them, an order of teachers like the Jesuits They taught, indeed, in a few schools, as in that of Liège; but in most schools with which they were connected, they received boarders and looked chiefly after their moral and religious training, while the secular instruction was in the hands of other teachers, who, however, were mostly imbued with the spirit of the Brethren. See Paulsen, Geschichte des g. U., 2nd ed., vol. I, pp. 158-160, where this author modifies, in the same way, the statements expressed in the first edition of his work. Further see the recent valuable work on Jakob Wimpfeling, by Dr. Knepper (Herder, 1902), page 7.

, p. 156. – The importance of Father Saccheri's work is being recognized more and more. Professor Ricci of Padua contributed a highly interesting article to the Jahresbericht der mathematischen Verbindung (Vol. XI, October-December 1902), on the "Origin and Development of the Modern Conception of the Foundations of Geometry." There it is said that "Saccheri's works prove him a man of indisputable merit, and one of the first geometricians of his century. ... The Euclides vindicatus alone is a work which could claim the labors of a whole life. In this work he erects an edifice of classical beauty which testifies to the extraordinary ability and geometrical taste of the architect." It is a perplexing problem to modern mathematicians how Saccheri could endeavor to refute his own arguments, with which he had so ably attacked the Euclidian system. Of this attempt

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Rh Professor Ricci says: "To-day it is hard to understand that a man of so sublime an intellect did not see the truth which he almost could grasp with his hands, and that he stubbornly tried to destroy with sophisms what he had built up with so much correct geometrical skill. Able and sagacious as he is in constructing his system, he is awkward and unskilful in tearing it down." – If for once I may be allowed to venture a conjecture, I would ask: Is it not possible that Saccheri did grasp the truth, but did not think fit to publish it boldly? He may have feared lest his contemporaries would raise a cry of indignation against such a mathematical heresy. Besides, as at that time such hypotheses would have been looked upon as mere freaks, there may have been apprehensions that the publication of such a work would injure the reputation of the college in which Saccheri taught mathematics. The attacks on the Jesuits on account of the bold theories of Hardouin (seep. 160), and similar instances in which the whole Society was reprehended for the attitude of individuals, would have been a sufficient cause for the wariness of the author. If this explanation were the correct one, it would certainly account for the weakness of the arguments which he used to pull down his splendid structure. These arguments, accordingly, would have been merely a thin veil to hide the purport of his work. I communicated this conjecture to Father Hagen of Georgetown, and was surprised to learn that this distinguished mathematician had given the same explanation of the curious phenomenon to Professor Halsted of the University of Texas, the translator of Father Saccheri's works. However, this is only a conjecture, though not void of

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656 probability. But even if the author did not see the full truth of his deductions at the time, this has happened to many great discoverers. Professor Whewell says of Kepler, with reference to a similar instance, that it seems strange that he did not fully succeed; "but this lot of missing what afterwards seems to have been obvious, is a common one in the pursuit of truth." (History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. II, p. 56. Appleton's ed., 1859.)

– Among the Jesuit scholars of the last decades mention should have been made of the sinologist Father Angelo Zottoli, who died in the College of Zi-ka-wei, near Shanghai, November 9, 1902. In 1876, Baron von Richthofen, in his work on China, expressed his regret that the Jesuit missionaries of recent times had not succeeded in regaining the scientific prestige of the Old Society. But a few years after, in 1879, the first volumes of a work appeared which inaugurated a new period in the scientific activity of the Jesuits in China. This was Father Zottoli's Cursus Literaturae Sinicae. When the work had been completed in five volumes, it put the humble religious in the front rank of sinologists. It has been styled "a landmark in the history of Chinese philology," and received the great prize of the Académie des Inscriptions et des belles Lettres. Mr. Legge, formerly a Protestant missionary in China, and one of the foremost sinologists of our age, declares that in Father Zottoli's Cursus "the scholarship of the earlier Jesuit missionaries has revived." (In vol. XXVII of the Sacred Books of the East, Preface, p. XIII.) In Father Zottoli's school some able Jesuit sinologists were trained, who now publish their researches in a special review,

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Rh the Variétes Sinologiques, whose scholarly character has been frequently attested to by the foremost orientalists. Father Zottoli was engaged for thirty years in writing a gigantic Chinese dictionary. The ablest of his pupils are now completing this work. (See Kölnische Volkszeitung, Wochenausgabe, January 1, 1903.)

Some readers may be surprised at the list of Jesuit writers – we have enumerated only a small fraction of the number of scholars that well deserve to be known better than is the case –, and ask why so little is said about them in works that treat of the history of the various sciences. It is not because their works are not of great importance for science. The explanation may be found in a remarkable utterance of the celebrated Kepler, the prince of astronomers: "Alas for prejudice and hatred! If a Jesuit writes anything, it is completely ignored by the adherents of Scaliger." Allusion is made to the famous controversy on chronology between the Protestant Scaliger and the Jesuit Petavius (see page 160). The same may be said of many another scientific discussion. Kepler himself, though a Protestant, was not afraid of being a friend of Jesuit scholars, nor of asking their opinion on many of the important questions which he was investigating. (See Johann Kepler, der Gesetzgeber der neueren Astronomie, by Adolph Müller, S. J., Professor of astronomy in the Gregorian University in Rome [Herder, 1903]; see especially chapters 12 and 17, and page 166.)

On page 265 it is said that the non-Catholic view of the Jesuits is not based on historical facts, but

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658 largely on works of fiction. A case in point is Zola's posthumous novel, the English edition of which was issued in this country in February, 1903. The subject of this work was announced as "illustrating the keenly antagonistic influences of the Jesuitical and secular parties in France, as instanced in the recent educational troubles." Though the book is styled "Truth," it is in reality a tissue of falsehoods and enormous charges, not only against the religious orders, but the Catholic Church as-such. The Baltimore Sun, February 19, 1903, says in a very judicious criticism, that the author "asserts and asserts, but, behold! of proof there is little or nothing. This, however, will make no difference to those readers to whom this diatribe appeals [among them the same paper reckons those who hate the Catholic Church, and who welcome any attack that may be made upon it]. In the present instance Zola has, seemingly, cared little about the truth of his statements." The book furnishes a strong proof of what we said on page 268, namely, that the present persecution of the teaching Congregations in France is in reality a brutal attack on Christianity and all religion. Zola says little about Jesuit education, but what is meant by secular education, is set forth in clearest light: All religious beliefs and observances are derided, every sign of religion is to be banished from the school, women are to be emancipated from the influence of the Church, experimental science is to take the place of religion in school and private life. It is the old Voltairian Écrasez l'infâme! This is the antagonist of "Jesuitical" education! (On this subject see the article of M. Brunetiere, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, December 15, 1902: "The Laws of Pro-

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Rh scription in France," translated in the Catholic Mind, New York, 1903, no. 2).

For the Catholic view of the educational movement in France during the last decade we refer to the Études, which contain many excellent articles not only on the religious side of the question, but also on modern school reforms, the classics, etc. See especially volumes 54 (page 100 sqq.), 57 (page 345 sqq.), 69 (page 224 sqq.), 70 (page 496 sqq.), 78 (page 21 sqq.), 79 (page 41 sqq.), 84 (page 654 sqq.), 86 (page 29 sqq. and 501 sqq.). In the volume mentioned in the last place, the article: L'Enseignement classique en Allemagne, son rôle pédagogique, contains interesting comparisons between the French and German secondary schools.

Under the above title, the Educational Review (March, 1903) published an address delivered by Mr. Sadler, at the Annual Congress of the Educational Institute, Glasgow, Scotland, December 30, 1902. Mr. Sadler admires many features in American education: the hearty belief of Americans in the value of education, the sacrifices they make for it, etc. But he discovers also the following defects and weaknesses: 1) In some cases municipal corruption has baleful results in the sphere of educational administration. 2) There is a grave doubt whether the stricter forms of intellectual discipline have not been unduly sacrificed in many American schools. The besetting sin of some modern methods of education is that they stimulate interest without laying corresponding stress

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660 on intellectual discipline. As it were, they feed the children on sweeties and plumcake, in a strenuous revolt against an austere tradition of too much oatmeal porridge. Nor does home discipline restore the balance. The younger Americans find it difficult to focus their attention on uncongenial tasks. An insidious evil is the tendency on the part of teachers to make lessons interesting by avoiding the harder, duller, and more disciplinary parts of the subjects. Another evil is the excessive encouraging, among young children, of what is called "self-realization", even occasionally to the point of impertinence. 3) Lack of severe discipline leads to a third weakness, – superficiality, – with its attendant evils, exaggeration in language and love of excitement. The Americans do not as yet sufficiently allow for the slow percolation of ideas into the mind. They make too many short cuts. They are too fond of the last new thing. They forget that a pupil gains true independence of taste and judgment by slowly and thoroughly working his way, under guidance and with encouragement, through masterpieces as a whole, and through masses of the same kind of work, often against the grain. All true culture has in it an element of stubbornness and persistence, which must be acquired through the lessons of life, and the lessons of the school, which ought to prepare for life. 4) A fourth danger proceeds from the tendency of American men to become unduly concentrated in business pursuits. Many Americans sterilize part of their nature by too great absorption in the excitement and struggles of commercial competition. This overzeal for business forms an atmosphere which cannot but affect educational ideals. Intense

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Rh absorption in commercial enterprise is not an aim worthy to dominate the thoughts and lives of the rising generation of a great people. The noble answer of the Short Catechism to the question: "What is the chief end of man?", deserves not to be forgotten in commercial pursuits.

It may be well to compare these statements with what has been said in the chapters on the "Intellectual Scope," "Prescribed Courses or Elective Studies," and "Classical Studies".

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 moons of the planet Jupiter, although it has since been determined from experiments on the surface of the earth. For a long time, an astronomer could foretell on what night and hour an eclipse of a given satellite would occur but he could not make the predicted minute agree with the actual time of eclipse. During the seventeenth century,, a Danish astronomer, discovered that the eclipses come 8 minutes and 18 seconds early when the earth is nearest to Jupiter and 8 minutes and 18 seconds late when it is on the opposite side of its orbit. He thus was the first to suspect that light could not flash instantaneously across the 186,000,000 miles which is the diameter of the earth's orbit. After it was found that light required 8 minutes and 8 seconds to come from the sun to the earth, it was a simple matter to find the space that it would move over in a year. This number, 63,368 radii of the earth's orbit or about six million million miles, has been since taken as a handy unit of measure in estimating the distances to the stars. Thus a light year is the distance that light will travel in a year at the rate of 186,000 miles a second. An astronomer expressing the distance of a star in terms of this unit would say that Alpha Centauri is 4.26 light years distant instead of 25,000,000,000,000 miles, and 4.26 years would represent the time that it takes light to come from that star to the earth.

Although it takes light only about 8 minutes to reach the earth from the sun and about 4 years from the nearest star, it requires only one second from the moon, which is nearer than the sun, and 47 years from the North Star, which is a long way from being our nearest star. Sirius, our largest star, is distant only 8½ light years, but Vega and Capella, which rank just below it, are respectively three and four times farther away. Some stars are so distant that it requires thousands of years for their light to reach us. According to the calculations of Kapteyn, only one-eighth of the 6200 stars whose distance was measured are nearer than 100 light

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Works

 * Toshiyukishū
 * Toshiyukishū

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 his sheath, and laughing gleefully, shot the gloomy monarch in the heart.

Ceres, in the meantime, nearly frantic with grief, searched over land and sea for her lost daughter, and when night fell, so that her search might not be hindered, she tore up young pine trees by the roots and dipped them in the fires of Mount Etna. She could not eat, saying (as Tennyson puts it) that the "nectar smack'd of hemlock" and the "rich ambrosia tasted aconite," while ancient poets claim that neither Aurora, the Dawn, nor Hesperus, the Evening Star, ever saw her rest. Yet unweakened by fatigue and lack of sustenance, the goddess turned to the earth and forbade it to bear until Proserpine was returned to her.

When Ceres discovered that the King of the somber, joyless region under the ground had carried off Proserpine and made her the Queen of his Shades, she left the home of the gods in anger and went to live among mankind. Jupiter at last becoming fearful for the fate of man if earth no longer bore fruit or grain, sent Mercury down to inquire of Pluto if there was any hope of Proserpine's return. The Fates sent reply that if Proserpine had not tasted the pomegranate, the food of death, she could not be detained, otherwise she must remain forever. Ascalaphus then stepped forward and said that he had seen the Queen eat some of the seeds of this fruit,—for which tattling he was turned into a screech owl. Jupiter, pitying Ceres in her disappointment, succeeded in effecting a compromise by inducing his brother to allow Proserpine to spend six months of every year with her mother. This, the Greeks say, is the cause of summer and winter.

When Proserpine appears, Ceres commands the seeds, also, to force their way above the ground, the orchards become bright with a wealth of blossoms and the fields fresh with sprouts and vines. Ceres then is happy and the world a busy, beautiful place in which to live, but when Proserpine leaves, she cares not what

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 cates that its diameter is four hundred million miles! The volume of this star is therefore about twenty-five million times as great as the volume of our sun. As far as we know, this is the largest star. This is surely most interesting. We might have imagined these gloriously tinted stars as small-sized novelties scattered about the heavens for our special edification—certainly we did not expect to find that some of them were so tremendously large that they would pass by our little golden orb as a speck of incandescent sand.

Not only is Antares of interest because of its great size and charming color but it also possesses a companion star of the vividest shade of green. This companion was first noted during an occultation in 1819, quite amazing its observer by sliding out from behind the moon just before the large red star emerged and dimmed its light by its powerful ruddy rays. The green-hued star is very tiny in comparison to Antares and may only be seen with the aid of a 5- or 6-inch telescope. Under good atmospheric conditions it is a very beautiful object.

The flame-red sun Antares beside its woodsy-green companion is one of the most impressive color combinations among the stars. Imagine living on a planet whose orbits encompassed such ostentatious stars! A green sunrise with a livid sky and a red sunset with a scarlet one—then a red sunrise and a green sunset—if colors affect one the way it is sometimes said that they do, the inhabitants of such a planet might live through "red hours" and "green hours" like "Dr. Jekylls" and "Mr. Hydes."

What a surprise to the eye and a delectable bit for the imagination are the blue, gold, green, rose, lilac, purple and other fires in the sun-lit sky. Here is something "as rare as a day in June." It would seem as if the whole solar system were enchanted if we might visit the planets of a white and sapphire blue sun, for instance, or those of one of topaz-yellow and heliotrope hue. On the other hand it might seem beyond the bounds of reason to an

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text:
Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/189

 MRS. MARCH'S BOARDERS.

BY CLARA AUGUSTA.

As ever any one of ye had any experience in taking city boarders? If you have, you needn't read this story, you can skip right on to the next one; but if you hain't, then I advise you to read it, and take warning by me.

It's got proper fashionable round here, in Peaville, for the farmer folks to take boarders from the city. It pays well, and anything that pays is pritty likely to be fashionable.

You see, these ere city people come out here to git a sniff of fresh air, and injoy the huckleberries and miskeeters, of which we ginerally have oceans.

Then they go home about the first of September, all burnt and tanned, and bit up, with all their clothes ruinated, and not a grate sight of money into their purses; and they tell every- body that they see how delightfully they have spent the summer.

Isaac, that’s my second son, and he’s been a hoss-car conductor in Bosting, and has seen a powerful sight of high life, says that they don’t go into the country for pleasure—they go because somebody else does. He says a woman would lose caste if she stayed to home while the rest of her neighbors was off. I dunna what caste means, but mebby you do. Isaac has been to school two year to the Mount Beabo Cemetory, and he is dreadful high-flown sense he come back.

A year ago last summer, Miss Brown—the colonel’s wife—she took boarders, and she got rich on it! She had as much as a dozen, and made a sight of money. Folks did pretend to say that she nigh about starved her boarders; but then everybody knows city folks is genteel, and genteel people, it stands to reason, don’t need so much to eat as common folks. They live on ceremony and perliteness some.

Mrs. Brown, she saved enuff out of her boarders to pay all expenses, and new furnish her parlor, besides putting a portagal over the front door, and buying a pearley shawl for her- self, and a ten-dollar thing, made out of hair and stuff, for her darter Ann to pin onto the back part of her head to set her bunnit onto. It's the slickest thing to keep a bunnit from slipping. And there's that ere purple silk bun nit of mine, that I've had nigh onto five years, it's all the time a slipping off from my head; and Sundays, when I go to meeting, I set in Capen Webster's pew instid of ourn, because his is a wall-pew, and I can put the back part of my bunnit right up aginst the side of the meeting ' us, and that makes it stay pat.

Mrs. Brown's parlor is ilegant. There hain't nothing like it in Peaville.

There's a Brussels carpet that is soft as a piller-tick when you step onto it ; and the cheers and sofys is kivered with green stuff that looks like the minister's wife's velvet bunnit; and there's two ottermans, and a picter of Henry Clay with a blue cloak on, and three chany Then they go home about the first of Sep- dogs on the mantel-shelf, and a marbie-topped tember, all burnt and tanned, and bit up, with table that looks jest as the grave-stuns in the all their clothes ruinated, and not a grate sight burying-ground does -only there ain't no deof money into their purses; and they tell every- scription on it. And she's got a fotygraft albion, with the picters of her father and mother, and her husband's father and mother, and all their folks, and Napoleon Bonyparte, and Gineral Stark, and Jenny Lind, and lots of others that I disremember intirely.

As soon as I seed them things in that parlor my mind was made up. I'd take boarders too.

I'm a widder woman, and my brother, Lemuel Hanscom, lives with me. He owns the sheep's pasture and the ten-acre wood lot, so I allers try not to be disrespectful to him.

He's a nice man, but he's dreadful nigh to being a monymanyach. He's had a sight of these ere Patent Office Reports sent to him from Washington, and they've long ago sot him crazy to invent sunthin'. And fer more than five year he's been a whittling, and boring and sawing away the best of the time, a trying to make some kind of a machine that'll never stop going. Perpetual motion, he calls it. He says if he can only git it, and he’s serting he can in time, ke shall be a richer man than Judge Fishtell that lives over to the corner, and keeps two hosses, and drinks brandy that is twenty dollars a the gallon.

Lemuel hain't really no right to meddle in my affairs, but when I'm a going to do anything oncommon, I ginerally speak to him about it, jest for the looks of the thing.

So, after I'd made up my mind about the boarders, says I to him, says I,

" Lem, I'm a going to take city boarders this summer."

title: Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/189


text: Index:Denslow's 5 Little Pigs.pdf

title: Index:Denslow's 5 Little Pigs.pdf


text:
Page:Jstraitsrsa31-33.pdf/62

 FOLK-LORE AND THE MENANGKABAU CODE IN THE NEGRI SEMBILAN.

The Negri Sembilan, unlike the other Protected States of the Malay Peninsula, has not yet quite got away from the traditions. which prevailed amongst the Aboriginal tribes; these traditions were partly adopted and somewhat modified by the colonists from other States of the Peninsula and from Sumatra; who, as the Resident, the Hon. Martin Lister, has pointed out in a paper communicated to the Society in 1887, "fell in with the Aboriginal views, and observed their rights to all waste lands, and their power in each State" but at the same time "brought their tribal laws with them."

It is well known that the primitive Malays of Sumatra practised exogamy, and—like all other exogametic races inter-tribal marriage was one of the most heavily punished offences.

When I went to the District of Kinta, Perak, in 1884, and was engaged in settling native Malay claims to mining lands, it puzzled me at first to understand the term "Waris Kinta," which was often quoted by native mine owners, and when I was transferred to an appointment in the Negri Sembilan, I remember that the late Sir Frederick Weld told me that one of the chief reasons why he had selected me, was, because there were few men in the service who could distinguish between a Waris and a Lembaga. I am afraid I looked confused, and I know that as soon as I got back to my Hotel, I looked in my "Swettenham"” and found that the word Lembaga meant somebody who had something to do in the affairs of the State. I had not lived long in Tampin, and mixed in Rembow and Gemencheh affairs before the distinction was made quite clear to me.

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text:
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 In 1890 Mr. Lister communicated a further paper to the Society, enlarging on the subject, shewing how the Sakais were merged in the Bidwandas, and how the constitution was established on Menangkabau lines.

My purpose in the present instance is to try and trace through the Folk-lore of the country, the why and wherefore of certain customs, which, alwaya stronger than written laws, have made the country what it is, a very favurite resting place for Malays, because of the conservation of such customs; in doing this, I shall endeavour to explain, as far as I am able, a few old fashioned sayings, which are even now less quoted than they used to be a few years ago.

Tengku Sayid Abdollah bin Sayid Saban, the Assistant Magistrate of Tampin, has greatly assisted me in the work, by explaining what seemed to me obscure in some of the sayings; the words and diction used being in many instances more or less obsolete, and also likely to bear a double meaning.

I have romanised each saying and made a very free translation in the latter, so far as I know how, giving what the native Malay understands to be meant; this seemed preferable to a more literal rendering as that would not so easily convey the meaning.

The sayings are more or less arranged in progressive sequence, as they seemed to suit the case as it occurred in the Negri Sembilan; first inhabited by Sakais, then gradually colonized by Malays, who, as they increased, amalgamated their own cus- tome with those of the Aborigines, and ultimately brought their Settlement to the dignity of a State, with a Raja chief, whose principal duty was to administer the Mohammadan laws, but with due regard to the Ancient Customs, many of which are very opposite to what is understood by the Law of the Prophet

I have used the collective name Sakai here, as the Malays commonly do, to express all the different sections of the Aboriginal tribes, whether true Sakais, Jakuns, Mantras, Semangs or any others.

The State of Rembow is particularly interesting at the present time, being in a transitory stage as to customary laws. The people are of course professed Mohammadans, but they are at the same time ashamed to abandon the old fashioned customs of the "Ada Perpatih." The incongruity of this was pointed

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 out to them by the late Sultan of Johor, when for a short time Rembow came under his influence, about eighteen years ago; from what I have heard he most likely laughed at their customs, and advised them that the only way for professed Mohammadans was to follow the "Adat Tomonggong," in other words the law of the Prophet. Since that time Rembow customs have greatly changed, and in such matters as debt quarrels, a man may act for his wife instead of her own relations, the law inheritance also follows the code of Islam, so that a man's children may inherit his property instead of his wife's relations.

In spite, however, of these decided advances made by the clever Rembow people they are still behind in some of matters; for instance, the law of marriage is still the law exogamy as in force amongst savages; as the people say it is not lawful to marry within one perut, or sa waris, that is within the limits of a well defined group of families whose common descent is more or less clear from one ancestress who was probably an immigrant from Sumatra several hundred years ago; this is very different from the Mohamadan law on the subject, where the table of affinity is even less comprehensive that it is under Christian rule.

Another Rembow custom, which I expect is almost peculiar to it as a Mohammadan country, is, that a man may not have more than one wife at the same time, except by special authority of the Penghulu; I cannot find out when this custom arose, nor can I find any special saying connected with it; the people can only remember that it always prevailed in Rembow, in accordance with a vow made by a tribal chief in Menangkabau before he and his people migrated to Rembow. At any rate the idea has taken auch strong hold of the people, that although when the late Sultan of Johor came to Rembow, as before stated, he ridiculed the custom as opposed to the teaching of Islamism, the people still hold by what has been handed down to them by their ancestors, and I understand that even to-day there are only three men in Rembow with more than one wife.

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Page:Jstraitsrsa31-33.pdf/65

 Ayer se'gantang sa'lobok, Sa'dangkang yang ber-bunyi' Siamang ber-jawat-jawat, Tompat ungka ber-dayu-dayu; Batin yang ampunya-nya.

From every pool a gallon of water, The frogs that croak; The gibbons that travel from bill to hill And the places of their noisy councils, All these belong to the Sakai chief.

The Sakai who first enunciated the theory contained in this description of his rights must have been far advanced in the imaginative power so well displayed in the story of Sri Rama, told by Mir Hasan and published by Mr. Maxwell in the Journal of the Society: or perhaps it was a Malay who made it up with the intention of putting on record that after all the Sakaies could only claim a little water in the recesses of the jungle where unclean beasts dwell.

The Sakais of today seem to wish for very little else, and all efforts to civilize them are unsuccessful; they are the least harmful of all savage races and are bound to retire before civilization, even if only the civilization of Malays, luckily there is still plenty of room for them in the forests of the Peninsula.

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text:
Page:Jstraitsrsa31-33.pdf/66

 ترومباكلوا

سلسيله كهوتن

Sal-silah ka-hutan , Tromba ka-loak.

The Genealogies belong to the Sakais But the written account of them to the Malays.

This is a very curious expression, Sal-silah is distinctly Arabic, and one is forced to imagine that Malays taught by Arab traders in the olden times invented the saying by way of flattering the Sakais.

The tradition is that the "Undang yang ampat" i.e. the four principal Lawgivers or Penghulus of the Negri Sembilan, are descendants of a Malay chief who settled on the Moar river and married one or more Sakai princesses, and by that means came into the possession of a good slice of the Peninsula, including the present Negri Seinbilan, Sungei Ujong, Klang, parts of Pahang, Nanning, Moar, and Jelebu. The Penghulus of Johol and Ulu Moar are the only two left of the "Undang yang ampat" whose jurisdiction still to some extent follows the ancient customs; when new Penghulus of Johol and Ulu Moar are appointed, the Bating or Sakai chiefs have a strong voice in the matter, as they are supposed to be the people who know most about the legitimate descent; reciprocally the Penghulus confirm newly appointed Batins.

يغامقوث

کاوغ كونوغ

بوكيت باكو

واریس دان فغهولو

Gaung guntong, bukit bakau, Waris dan Penghulu yang ampunya-nya.

The stream heads and narrow valleys, The hills and the surrounding plains Are the property of the chief and people of the Waris tribe. (i. e . Bidwanda).

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text:
Page:Jstraitsrsa31-33.pdf/67

 The claim here set forth by the first settlers in the original Sakai country embraces the whole country side, to the effectual exclusion of the Sakais, who themselves tacitly acquiesce in it, by gradually retiring to the more remote jungle-covered hills without any protest.

The Waris tribe were the first-comers, followers of a chief, who followed their chief's example and intermarried with the Sakai race; therefore as the land belonged originally to their Sakai wives, the custom is still in force in the Negri Sembilan, that all ancestral land shall be held by the women.

The census taken in 1891 shewed that the Malay population in Rembau was much more dense than in any other of the protected Native States, and that it was the only State in which the native women outnumbered the native men; in Rembau not one per cent of the native customary holdings are registered as the property of men. I believe the same thing obtains in Nanning of Malacca, where the customs are very similar.

The Johol chief, Dato Johol Johan Pahlawan Lela Perkasa Setia W'an, is to this day, although a man, to some degree looked upon as a woman, and in consequence except to pay homage to his suzerain he is not supposed to leave his house for any purpose of adminstering justice or attending ceremonies. Of the Undang yang ampat who first administered the Negri Sembilan, one of them, the youngest, was a woman, who settled in Johol. As a further mark of his feminine attributes he always wears his hair long.

Although the Sakais have given up the land to the Malays, they still, as shown under No. 2, retain the right—or the semblance of it—of appointing the Undang or Penghulu; themselves being in turn confirmed by the Penghulu when appointed as Batins by their people.

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text:
Author:Bertrand Zadig

As illustrator

 * Critical Woodcuts (1926) by Stuart Pratt Sherman

title: Author:Bertrand Zadig


text:
A Show for Eric

LOT of sympathy’s been wasted by the S. P. C. A. and other societies on dogs that have had their tails removed. Laying in bed there, I was kind of moved to wonder if anybody ever’d thought how the tails felt about it. I knew.

Before I stepped on that nail the only part of me that hadn’t been all shot with the rheumatiz had been my right leg and foot. This was just what the docs wanted, so they took it, leaving me just the part that ached.

An old cuss fixed like I was gets a kind of antipathy to white gowns and blue stripes. Docs and nurses, smiling professional and not telling you anything, got on my nerves for fair. That was what made me notice Lydia first—that, and the fact that even the boys at the store seemed to get along first rate without the old man to jack them up. They come to see me once—but that ain’t got anything to do with Lydia.

It was on one of them blue days that I separate her first from the rest of the scenery. I watch her close, not because she’s a walking panacea for the pink-eye, but because she’s the only one who hasn’t got a dopestick or a thermometer concealed about her.

She’s a cork-carpet specialist, her life job being to keep the dirt from showing when the inspector doc makes his regular rounds. One slant at her hands, broad and red in the knuckles and corned-up in the palms, says a mouthful about what she’s been idling away her time doing since she was sixteen. I dope out she knows the feel of a mop better’n my nose knows air.

And now she’s got a permanent wave in her backbone from a lotta stooping. Her face probably once was fat like her waistline, too, but now it’s flabby, and getting ready to wrinkle bad. At that, it’s behind her hair, which is white everywhere except where it’s kinda yellow in spots, like some old guys’ mustaches. With the sorta patient, beat look she’s got in her eyes, you can see that the best Lydia ever coulda been was a chapter on low visibility in females. You can figure her young and spry and shiverin’ the shimmy just about as easy as you can figure me, dolled up in five-ouncers, printing a kayo on the chin of Jack Dempsey. And me tied up with rheumatiz.

At first I try to think up something to say to her, but it looks like all we had in common is fifty-odd years which neither of us wants or is proud of. She don’t bother, though. She just hobbles in, pulling her pail of suds, slaps the hot soap and water all around the cork carpet, and then slaps it up again, wringing out the cloth every time it gets sogged. Then she hobbles on to number three-forty-six, next to my room, where they’s another old fool. When I hear him cussing at everybody, and Lydia, too, when she comes in, I wonder why.

At first I try to think up something to say to her, but it looks like all we had in common is fifty-odd years which neither of us wants or is proud of.

By the time I’m setting up in bed, though, I’m chatting regular with Lydia. It ain’t natural for a guy who’s been gabby as a solo record on the squealola all his life not to talk to somebody, and Lydia’s the only one I see who ain’t got smiling professional replies all on tap.

Mostly at first she pretends she don’t hear me when I ask her questions, but after I keep it up for three or four mornings she kinda forgets the blank stare when she comes in and nods.

Then, one day when she’s about half through the floor, she straightens up until she ain’t much worse than round-shouldered, and looks at the window. Without minding me she goes over and fingers the cheap curtains.

“How—much cost these—you think?” she rasps, and I wonder if her voice is so rusty from not using it any.

“The curtains?” I say eager, glad to guess at anything if it’ll make her talk.

“Oh, maybe about three bucks a pair.”

“Bucks?” she repeats, the blank look coming back quick.

“Dollars I mean,” I says. “About three dollars, I think.”

“Three dollars” I get a full look at her faded-out blue eyes, half hid down in the flaps of skin, and it’s funny, but I’d swear I seen something that woulda been a smile if she’d knowed how, coming into them. She was looking right through me, though, and I got a spooky sort of feeling.

“What’re you going to do, buy some for the house?” I asks, facetious.

“For my boy!” she says sudden, and I notice the rasp’s most gone all of a sudden. “Curtains—he needs them in his room. It ain’t got curtains and he’s coming home now soon. The paper says” She stops short and picks up her mop, but I’m not going to be cheated that easy.

“Go on!” I urged. “Tell me about him. What’s his name and where is he?”

This brings her head up again, and bless me, if there ain’t a coupla tears in the corners of her old eyes.

“Eric!” she says, softer than she’s spoke before. “My Eric! He’s in France now, the paper says. On his way back from Germany.”

“Oh, he’s been in the army, eh?”

She just looks at me puzzled.

“What kinda soldier was he?”

“A good soldier!” she flashes. “A fine soldier!”

“I betcha!” I agree enthusiastically. “But was he carrying a gun or was he flying, or”

“Gun,” she answered. “And now he’s come home soon. When he’s work a while I don’t have to scrub no more. My Eric!” She smiles now regular, and I wonder to myself if it ain’t the mercy of the Lord her boy is one of them that’s coming back.

“You was telling me about the curtains you was going to buy?” I suggests.

“Yes, I get them—next week!” she says. “This week one more five dollars on his rug for the room, and then I buy curtains.”

There was a kinda pride and triumph in her voice that all of a sudden made me feel outa it.

“And you got him a rug, too, eh?”

“Yes, Axyminister!” she answers. “Twenty-two dollars and fifty cents.” And then, remembering her job, she finishes up quick.

Next day I ain’t feeling so sprightly myself, and all I do is watch her when she’s working. I look at her closer, though, and I see the stockings she’s wearing are about an inch thick, where they’s any stocking at all. On her left ankle, just above the raggy shoe, is a bunch of holes the size of the openings through chicken wire. This ain’t what picks my attention, though—the Lord knows my own socks is bad enough most usually. It’s the fact that under there is a big bunchy bundle of what looks like a dirty bandage wound round and round. It’s the foot she limps with, too.

I asky Miss Bradley, the nurse, about it first time I get a chance. It seems that Lydia’s really in a bad way. From standing up on her old number sevens every day for so many years, she’s wore out the pep in the walls of her veins.

“But ain’t there anything she can do for it?” I ask, wondering how come anybody just has to grin and bear a grief like that.

Miss Bradley shrugs her shoulders.

“She has been advised to go to bed with it and give it a long rest,” she says, superiorlike. “After four or five weeks, perhaps, if she would wear an elastic stocking—but you know how useless it is to advise anything of the kind to a scrubwoman.” And she smiles contemptuous.

I get kind of choky in the throat, but it’s mostly the mad that always grips me when I know arguments ain’t worth the wind. Miss Bradley was a trained nurse in a pay hospital where charity cases always got the icy stare. Looking at it cold-blooded, I suppose the directors weren’t to blame. The county hospital was made to take care of unfortunates who didn’t have the price for a private place; and at that, I’ve always heard that the hospital I was in didn’t make ends meet any too well in spite of being crowded most of the time. During the next couple of days, when Lydia comes in I try to get her to go down and have the charity docs give her bum leg an examination, but it ain’t any use.

“I must stay here,” she decides, slow and raspy. “My Eric” And it don’t matter a continental hoot to her if her leg rots off, just so she gets curtains and things in that room by the time her boy comes back!

Next day when she shows up, I see something’s happened. The limp’s too bad to be forgot entirely, but Lydia’s somehow changed it till it’s almost a hop, skip, jump. And when she goes after the floor, I hear a funny, hoarse kinda noise down in her throat. I listen, scared for the second the old wench is having a death rattle or something, but then I get hep, and almost bust myself laughing! She’s singing! It’s way off the key and all that, but after I get the notion, I figure out it must be a hymn in Svensk or another of them north languages.

“Heard from Eric, Lydia?” I calls out, knowing they’s just one big thing that’d make her happy.

She turns quick to me, nodding and smiling. Them old eyes is just almost ready to run over.

“Yes, he’s come soon. I got this morning” And she fumbled in the bosom of her tattered apron, drawing out one of the red-triangled envelopes, wrinkled up already by many handlings.

“It say he start the third,” she goes on.

“This is the twenty-fourth, ain’t it?” I ask.

“Yes! My Eric! It say he’s bring a big, wonderful surprise for me, too.”

“Maybe a real German helmet,” I ventures, cautious.

She snorts disdainful, and the four flaps of skin that once was chins straighten out into one proud old chin.

“I got two helmets now!” she says, “And a cross, too. Souveeners!”

“You don’t mean it! Well, well, Eric musta walked along right behind the band wagon playing the barrage music. Maybe he’s got a hunk of the Clown Prince’s coat tails.” But Lydia’s clean forgot there’s any old pegleg in the world called Noonan.

Next morning at the time Lydia usually appears, another mop rustler swushes the suds under my bed. I gather from what she says that Eric has come back, and that Lydia’s so happy she’s taking a day off to celebrate.

I read three newspapers and a part of a novel that day, but all of it’s flat as betless poker. Every now and then I catch myself figuring what a whiz of a dinner Lydia’s getting for Eric right about now, or how Eric’ll like his Axyminister or something. Also I wonder if the boy brought back enough of a wad with him so Lydia’ll be able to hang up her cue and just enjoy having him for a while.

All of which gets answered next morning. A little bit later than usual, Lydia hobbles in. Her face ain’t really all wrinkles, but her hump is back and she don’t look like I thought she would. She nods weary to me, and slops some water outa her pail as she sets it down. Her leg acts like it’s a lot worse, because she has to stop every now and then to hold it. More’n what I see, I sense that Eric ain’t been exactly a cure-all, no matter what’s the surprise he’s brought back for his mother. I lie there nearly five minutes trying to dope some way I can find out and not cause no trouble, but tact ain’t in my line.

“I hears you’re to be congratulated, Lydia!” I sings out cheery at last. “Your boy got back whole, didn’t he?” She didn’t bother with English none, and what she said went clean over my noddle, but with them brown eyes flashing it didn’t matter much whether it was French or Chinee.

A smile comes to her face and she nods, but I sees her lips working like she wanted to say something only it comes hard. As she looks she leans so heavy on the mop that the wood bends. Her smile don’t last long, either.

“Well, that is the best news of the year!” I goes on, acting as if I didn’t have no suspicions at all. “Did he get decorated or promoted or anything?”

““He’s—officer,” she says, gulping. “Sergeant.”

“Bully for him! He made good, eh? Was that the surprise he was bringing back to you?”

She shakes her head, but I see there ain’t real gladness there because her mouth twitches and she kinda bends her head down slow. Then all of a sudden something breaks. She gives a funny, hoarse noise in her throat and flops down, dropping the mop. Her head is hid in her dirty sleeves on the end of my bed, but I can tell by the way her shoulders shake that she’s crying. There ain’t no more noise about it; she’s just all in and I can see that. The docs had told me that if I try to do too much maybe a blood clot would slip up from my stump and stop my heart, but I take a chance on it. Pulling myself over I reaches and pats her on the back.

“There, there, Lydia,” I says soothing, feeling like an old ass while I does it. “What’s the matter? Can’t I help out some? Is it your leg that’s hurting bad this morning?”

That just brings a shake of her head, but after a while I get her so she'll talk some, and I find out the whole thing. It’s a real grief, too. Seems that Eric’s surprise is a French flapper he’s gone and married. The darn kid’s so much in love that he don’t even see Lydia no more. The way I dope it out, the only thing that’s kept her up for a long time is knowing her boy’s on the way home, and now he gets back he’s planning on boarding out with his new wife because he don’t think Lydia’s place is good enough.

“What’s he working at?” I ask, wishing I had hold of his ear for just a minute.

“He’s washer down at garage,” Lydia tells me between sobs. “He only make sixteen dollars a week.”

When I wonder how he’s going to support a wife on that she gives me a weird tale about something he’s making that’s going to win a fortune for him. I can’t quite savvy the idea, as Lydia ain’t any too hep herself, but I do understand that Eric not only ain’t planning on living at home, but he ain’t got money to waste helping out his ma. Even the fifteen a month he sent her while he was in the service is stopped now, and the government don’t help out no more. He wants her to go down to the county hospital to get her leg fixed, but this only makes Lydia feel worse. She’s sure it’s just because he’s ashamed of her and don’t want her around. I’m so mad I’m just all hopping down inside, but I try to make her think it’s all coming out all right. I tell some lies and do some tall propheting, and finally Lydia climbs up on her bum pins and starts her job again.

I watch her finish and go on to the next room, and then I start. Lydia’s give me the name of the garage where Eric’s pulling down his sixteen per, and I phone the place. Eric ain’t there. They tell me he only works nights, scrubbing Lizzies, but they gives me his address. I scribble a note, and send it to him by A. D. T. Then I hunches myself up good and comfortable on the pillows and does some planning. If anything less’n death and dynamite’ll start this here ungrateful Swede right why I’m the guy to administer the dose.

Along about four Miss Bradley breezes in and says there’s a young fellah by the name of Eric Smith waiting to see me.

“Smith?” I asks. “What’s he done with the rest of it?”

This is a new one on Miss Bradley. She had him sign his name on the visiting card, and he wrote it Smith. She don’t know he’s the son of old Lydia Smithback, so I don’t bother to elucidate.

The minute he comes in, though, I have to do some sudden revising of my ideas. He’s tall and blond, of course, but he ain’t got the selfish lines about his mouth that I’m looking for. Except where the Picardy sun burned him too bad you can see he’s all pink and white and young. His eyes is as solemn as a couple of blue beads, and his hair is part plastered flat and part sticking up, where the army barber clipped it too short.

“How come only Smith now?” I says, after I got him to ease into a chair. “The way I heard it was Smithback.”

He colored just like somebody spilled red ink on a blotter, and just then I notices his hands for the first time. They’re awful big and wide, but they look like they could do things.

“Why, I—you see, it was because I’ve got such a funny name,” he says, nearly busting the brim off’n his straw, twisting it. “Eric Smithback, you know. When I was in school the boys used to call me ‘earache, toothache, bellyache, Smithback!’ I made up my mind that when I come to go into business I’d be just plain Smith. I told Nannette that a whizz-bang just naturally cut off the ‘back’.”

“Oh, yes! And Nanette’s the new wife, eh?”

He nodded, and a kinda proud grin come to his mouth, but I saw him looking at me funny just the same.

“You’re wondering what the devil I’m coming to, ain’t you?’ I queries. “Where I got my info, and what I’m going to do with it?”

“Well—yes, in a way. It had crossed my mind that perhaps my mother” He looked down at his hat.

I clears my throat.

“Never mind about that part just now,” I says. “You’re the one I’m interested in. A bit of news came to me the other day about a young chap who was working on some kinda invention. Seeing as I’ve got maybe a little bit of capital to sink, I was wondering”

You oughta seen the pep that come into that guy when I says that! He straightens up in his chair and looks sharp at me, and then he talks. There ain’t nothing solemn or bashful about him now. He starts right in Fletcherizing the rag about a new kinda periscope for autos. Says he got the notion when he was squinting throtigh the trench tubes looking for Boches.

As well as I can get it at first, his plan is to manufacture a simple periscope that you can stick in a job so as the image of what’s coming on the road behind shows up on the glass that’s set in the dash. This gives the driver a good view of everything, eliminates rear-end collisions, and also lets a guy who wants to step on her for a while see when a cycle cop is on his trail.

The last makes a real hit with me, because when I’m out on the open concrete I like to know what fifty feels like, and it’s cost me more’n enough to buy a half a dozen of them periscopes, already.

It seems that Eric has been doping it all out and has made up a coupla the tubes. He ain’t patented them yet, though, on account of being too broke, and he ain’t had no cars to try them on. He took the place down to the garage just so as he could tinker round a little at night when they wasn’t anybody to butt in. The hundred-odd bucks he brought back with him is fading fast, though, and he’s worried. Not a word about Lydia does he say, however, and this kinda makes me sore.

“Don’t you think you oughta try to get a job that'll pay enough to support this wife of yours—not to mention your mother?” I suggests finally. “It'll take a year or two before you’re making much dough outa that periscope, even if it pans out big.”

This flusters him.

“I—I would if I could,” he says, “but what can I find to do? I ain’t trained at anything. I’m just as sorry for mother as I can be, but it looks to me as if Nanette and I were going to have an awfully hard rub just to get along.”

I kinda get hep to something right then, and I questions him careful. I don’t let him on to what I’m driving at, but I find out that he don’t know Lydia’s really down and out with her game leg. She ain’t told him nothing about the curtains or the Axyminister, neither, and he believes that she’s an “attendant” at the hospital. Probly she ain’t really thought it necessary to slip him the news that she’s washing floors. The three a day she’s getting looks like big money to him, not being wise to what it takes even to keep a cottage going in these sky-rocketteering times.

I don’t promise him nothing, making off I wanta see his machine some before I springs my proposition, but I tell him to come back at eight o’clock sharp next morning, and bring his wife and the periscope, too. Then, after figuring out something on my pad of paper, I eat supper and hit a night’s sleep right on the head.

Miss Bradley ain’t much of a sport, but when I let her in on the whole dope she fixes up a screen for me just the way I want it. Guess she ain’t really got much against Lydia, only a sorta feeling that women who washes floors ain’t worth the trouble. I don’t fight with her, though; the party is mine all the. way. All she’s to do is give the signal. After it’s all set, I jerk the stylographic and scribble a coupla blue slips.

Maybe you got a notion of what I supposed Nanette’d be. It was a kinda mixture of the “Follies” and the Russian ballet, with a dash of hot pep that ain’t in either. Nanette was going to be a regular seventh daughter of a seventh Bara, or something like that. Them was the kinda dames a guy met up with regular in the Boulevard Lannes and the cancan Montmart and them other gay lanes of Paree—or that’s the way I had it, anyway. Like with Eric, though, my advance dope is way off.

Nanette slips in easy with Eric, a slim little brown-eyed doll of a girl who just about comes to his shoulder. She’s got her eyes on him when I first sees her, but it ain’t the dumb, adoring kinda worship you sees in cows and highschool girls at the matinées. She’s a wise little piece, but you see right away she knows she’s got the finest man that ever chewed round steak and she ain’t taking no chances that he’s going to notice nobody else while she’s around. There ain’t a line about her that ain’t got a little curve in it somewheres, and altogether I dope her as one of the easiest ladies to look at I ever seen. If they’d only stuck this here war back in the eighties or nineties! But they was only fighting the Civil War over for the third time then, or trying to kill off typhoid and Spaniards at the same time, and that didn’t take me over to Picardy in olive drab. After an eyeful of her, though, I ain’t blaming Eric more’n half as much for forgetting all the rest of the world.

Eric has slipped her the glad news that maybe I’m going to be an angel for his new reverse English spyglass, and so she’s a little nicer than meringue to me. I find her speech remarkable, considering she’s just learning it from Eric. It’s soft inflected, and maybe a little more even accented than I’m used to hearing, but it don’t jar the ears none. Her vocab probly beats Shakespeare’s on points when it’s scrapping for the lovey-dovey champeenship of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. It don’t go so much further, though, but I see she knows how to camouflage all her puzzlement in the kinda smile that makes her an A-1 listener.

The boy takes off about sixteen gunnysacks from the periscope he’s carrying, and breaks right in with the explanation. I let him rave for a while, and so far as I can see the thing looks like a good bet. When you look at the glass that sticks up in the dash of a car you can see the window of the room and all the trees outside just as plain as if you was peeking in the finder of one of these here press cameras.

The only thing that bothers me is how much the devices can be made to sell for. Eric assures me that the price won’t be outa reach, though, and I let it go at that. Seems to me that the guys who makes real high-priced cars oughta fall for the scope, even if it can’t be tacked on to flivvers. It’s got the big advantage over the mirrors most cars use for looking backward in that it shows the whole road clear and plain; no cycle cop can steal up on the blind side like with a regular glass.

The hands of my watch is sliding around toward nine o’clock, though, and I keep one eye on the doorway for Miss Bradley’s high sign. Pretty soon she sails past holding up her hand to her forehead. This means that Lydia’s in three-forty-four.

Right then I shut off the periscope discourse and chase both Eric and Nanette behind the screen in the corner. Neither of them wants to hide very bad, but I explain that I’m giving a little show all by myself and if them or the periscope comes outa cover before I give the word, I’m going to bean them with the shoe I got handy for just that purpose. Eric starts to palaver, but I shut him up effectual, telling him if he ever wants his cop glass to get a look-in he’s gotta imitate the well-known clam right now. I expect it’s because he’s been used to hearing all kinda orders he didn’t understand, but he don’t say no more, and Nanette’s as quiet as a striker who’s come back to his job.

Then Lydia, pulling her pail of suds, backs into the door and pushes it wide open. When I sees the trouble she has just in navigating with the mop and other stuff, I feel like hopping outa bed, stump and all, and helping her. She’s maybe even more bent than yesterday, and after one good look I see it’s because her spirit’s all squashed. She ain’t ready to break down like she done the time before; she’s just humped over and apathetic—an old woman who ain’t got a reason in the world to keep her up, only she can’t shuffle off quick enough. Honest, it just give me back that kinda mad feeling I got the first time I heard about Eric. How could any guy, no matter how blind in love he was, miss seeing that his own mother’s like that?

I don’t bother her for a second or two, till she’s fair started. She limps so bad now that she’s gotta hold on to the mop or the end of the bed or something when she goes from one place to another. When she stops a second to kinda draw a deep breath, and looks up at me with them full eyes, I just can’t stand it any longer.

“I thought you told me your son was back, Lydia?” I asks.

“Yes, he back,” she says toneless.

“He ees come back and thank you—dear old man!” And then she bent down quick for a hug and a kiss that pretty nearly paid me up in full for being thought an antique.

“Well, why the deuce don’t he have you go to a hospital and take care of yourself, then? First thing you know, Lydia, you’ll be as bad off as I am.”

She kinda nods, and looks me over slow.

“Worse,” she answers, her voice a sorta tired croak. “Doctor says my leg come off or I die. I die! Eric he got no use for me no more.”

“Oh, now, Lydia!” I protests. “That ain’t reasonable. If you was to tell him now how you scrimped and saved to get him them curtains and that rug for his room, and how you was waiting all the time, just kinda living on in hopes that he’d come back outa hell and be your own boy again, don’t you think it’d be different?”

She shook her head wearily, and one of the white, stringy strands of hair fell down over her eyes.

“I no tell,” she says. “Young woman come; old woman go. I go! He not even want my name no more because he’s ashame.”

Right then the screen fell over forward with a bang, and I got a flash of a sorta silky tigress as Nanette ran to Lydia. Throwing her arms around the old woman Nanette lifted her and set her clean on the edge of my bed. Then, just as if it was all part of the same thing, she turned her pretty head toward where Eric stood. She didn’t bother with English none, and what she said went clean over my noddle, but with them brown eyes flashing it didn’t matter much whether it was French or Chinee. They’s some things that get across in any language; one’s love talk and the other’s what Nanette says to Eric.

I looked at him, and right then I know the trouble’s only started. He’s standing straight and stiff like the corporal of the guard is just getting him ready for inspection, but the boy part of him’s clean gone. When I see them blue eyes wide and burning, and the yellow hair all crinkly and standing up, I get a kinda odd notion what them berserks musta been once. He ain’t got any more pink and white. His face is just about the color of chalk crayons, only where he’s burned it’s kinda muddylike, and them big hands open and shut.

“God!” he says, blowing out his breath explosive. I got my suspicion from just looking at him, though, that he ain’t calling on no regular God; it’s Thor, or Woden, or one of them other Svensk soreheads that he’s thinking about.

“Never mind that part,” I says nasty. “Some guys take a lotta telling before they get wise. What’re you going to do about it?”

He steps up toward the bed, jerky.

“Damn you—Noonan!” he chokes. “Damn you! You knew about this all along" His fist comes up as if he’s going to smash me right where I lay, but Nanette says one thing sharp and short in French and he stops.

Lydia, who’s till then just dumb like the mop she’s still holding, breaks into sobs that’s dry and hard. They come from way down somewheres, and just listening hurts me.

“He—he can’t—do—nothing!” she breaks out. But Nanette kisses her a half a dozen times, and does her best to quiet her.

“Now look here!” I says, seeing something’s going to bust right quick. “You, Eric Smithback! That periscope notion of yours maybe is worth something and maybe it ain’t. Here’s my proposition. I gotta have a new truck driver delivering shoes for me from my stores. That’s your job and you get thirty-five a week outa it. Twenty-five is what you’re paid for the work, and ten goes on as payment for your periscope. Besides, you get these!” And I flashes the two checks for five hundred apiece I had all ready. “One of these takes her”—and I motions to Lydia—“to some hospital and pays the bills for what’s coming to her leg. If it needs more’n five hundred to do the job I'll help out. The other one fixes up you and Nanette provided you agrees to live in Lydia’s home with her. If that ain’t good enough you just see that you make it good enough. Outa this I get about a fourth interest in your periscope, after paying for the patents and so on. Is it a go?”

Eric opens his mouth once or twice, and I sees he’s having a hard time keeping his Adam’s apple in the right place. Then, without even so much as shaking me by the hand, he takes those blue slips, looks a second at Nanette and his mother, and then stalks over to Lydia. Lifting her just as tender as if all of a sudden she was likely to break, he walks straight outa the room and down the corridor toward the elevator.

Nanette watches after him, kinda astonished. Then, like a flash, she’s bending over the bed, them brown eyes so full they splash on to the spread. “He—he ees come back,” she says, and there’s a little catch in her voice that don’t hurt its loveliness none. “He ees come back and thank you—dear old man!” And then she bent down quick for a hug and a kiss that pretty nearly paid me up in full for being thought an antique.

title: A Show for Eric


text:
Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/177

 No wonder that the appearance of Sirius was hailed with reverence when its rising just before the sun meant also the rise of the life-giving river and the prosperity of the inhabitants of Egypt! However, as mentioned before, with the precession of the equinoxes, the heliacal rising of Sirius has changed and its brilliant light no longer announces the rising of the Nile.

Sirius is one of our nearest stars for its light requires only 8½ years to reach the earth. Yet its nearness does not account altogether for its quite exceptional brightness, for our sun at the same distance would appear as a star of the 6th magnitude and be invisible to the unaided eye. Only two stars, as far as has yet been discovered, lie closer to the earth than Sirius. The second brightest star in the sky is Canopus, visible from the southern hemisphere, but so far away that its distance can scarcely be estimated.

Halley, a celebrated English astronomer born 1656, made the first discovery of the relative motion of the stars when he noted that Sirius had moved from the position assigned to it on Ptolemy's map of 150 We have now reliable data for discussing the proper motion of about 10,000 stars. The proper motion of stars consists of a displacement in various directions of the individual stars. Thus the configuration of a constellation may slowly change, and, although many groups of stars all travel in the same direction, there are also conspicuous instances where they move in different directions. The Big Dipper and the Southern Cross are two star groups whose stars are traveling along different courses and after a period of time extending over thousands of years, the 'dipper' and the 'cross' effect of these two constellations will have altogether disappeared.

For a while Sirius was believed to be traveling in a straight line, but soon irregularities were discovered in the great star's motion, an "undulatory progressive motion" on each side of a middle line. From a knowledge of these oscillating movements,

title: Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/177


text:
Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/190

MRS. MARCH'S BOARDERS 189 “Take city fiddlesticks!” says he, whittling away on a round stick with a hole through it.

“No,” says I, “‘boarders. Mrs. Brown made money last summer, and I mean to see if I can’t do as well as her. My Melissy is crazy after one of them new-fashioned pepperlambs that they wear hitched onto the waists of their gounds, and I ‘calkerlate she shall have it. And Isaac needs a new bedstead in his room, and I mean to have some furniture in the fore room, jest like Mrs. Brown’s.”

“You can do as you’re a mind to,” says Lemuel, kinder cross like; ‘but if you do take boarders, you’ll'wish yer cake dough afore you git through. A scientific man hadn’t ort to be bothered! They'll put me back so on my machine that I shan’t git it ready to go to Washington till next winter.’ And I meant to use some of the money I shall git for the invention in buying that farm of Spencer’s.”’

“'Tain’t no use to talk,” says I, “I’m fully sot,” and he said no more, for he knows when I'm deetarmined on a thing that I hain’t easy persuaded to give it up.

I got Eustace Atkins, the schoolmaster over to the corner, to write me some advertisements to put into two of the Bosting papers, and he did it powerful. To have read what he writ you'd have thought our farm was a Paradise upon airth.

He called the house Poplar Lodge, and there hain’t but one popple on the farm that I know of, and that’s out back of the hog’-house.

Well, in three days, I was overrun with folks that had come out to see the primises. And most of ’em smelt of musk, and carried their heads dreadful high, and turned up their noses at everything. The men they tip-toed round among the cabbage-plants and ruty-beggars, and wondered what kind of flowers them things would turn into; and the women, they screeched; and held their smelling-bottles to their noses when the geese and turkeys chased ’em, and stuck out their necks at ’em, as them animals is apt to do.

The fifth day there was a feller came that I thought would do. His name was Henry Cliffe, and he was about as nice-looking a chap as you'll see anywhere out of a picter-book. He was tall, and wore one of these short coats that is a kind of a cross between a coat and a jacket, and he had a red neck-tye, and a buff Vest, jest as if he was reddy to be married.

His hair and eyes was black, and his mustache was black, too; and he kinder put me in mind of one of them pirats, or bandanna chief-tains, that we read about in the illustratiorated newspapers—them fellers that one is awfully afeard of, and yet sorter falls in love with at the same time.

I took him to once, and give him the north frunt chamber.

The same day there came a woman, all in black, and as handsome as a picter. She'd lost her husband not long afore, she said, and wanted to come out into the country to recooperate. -

I told her I didn’t know about the cooperating. It wasn’t common for women folks to larn the cooper’s trade; but then, if they was a going to vote, I didn’t know as there'd be anything onproper in their learning one of the men folks’ trade.

She laffed, and sed I didn’t quite understand her. Her health was poor, and she had come to the country to recruit.

And then she talked so pitifully of her grief and trouble, and flurrished her scented handkercher so sorrowfully around her eyes, that I agreed to take her. I gave her the south frunt chamber, and told her there was a young man by the name of Cliffe in tother, with black eyes, and a red neck-tye; and she sithed, and said black eyes and red neck-tyes were nothing to her now.

Her name was Myra Westley, and she came from New York.

I felt well pleased with her, for T calkerlated that being in trouble she wouldn't be likely to have much appetite. People don’t ginerally, you know. So thar’d be a saving.

The next day Mrs. Wilson came, with her three children, and I agreed to take ’em if they'd be contented to sleep in the tool-house chamber, because all my rooms was full. Mrs. Wilson was dreadful genteel, but she said she’d stay if she had to roost in a tree! For her neighbors, the Joneses, and the Smiths, and the Jenkinses, had all gone into the country, and she’d die but what she’d be as much as they was!

Them children of hern was awful! If you should sarch the world over from Californy to the Gulf of Mexico, you couldn’t find three such youngsters. Adolphus, he was twelve year old, and Katrina Adelaide was ten, and Ignatius Catterangus was seven.

They provoked Lemuel’s life out of him. Dolph, as his ma called him, cut Lem’s machine all up to kindle a brush-heap with: and Adelaide tore the picters out of his Patent-Office Reports, and papered the hen-house with ’em; and Angus, the little one, he upsoot my whole

title: Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/190


text:
Page:Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways, 11th Edition (December 2023).pdf/45

MUTCD 11th Edition Section 1B.03

Standard:

The U.S. Secretary of Transportation, under authority granted by the Highway Safety Act of 1966, decreed that traffic control devices on all streets and highways open to public travel in accordance with 23 U.S.C. 109(d) and 402(a) in each State shall be in substantial conformance with the Standards issued or endorsed by the FHWA.

Support:

23 CFR 655.603 also requires traffic control devices on all streets, highways, bikeways, and site roadways open to public travel in each State be in substantial conformance with standards issued or endorsed by the Federal Highway Administrator.

Standard:

After the effective date of a new edition of the MUTCD or a revision thereto, or after the adoption thereof by the State, whichever occurs later, new or reconstructed devices installed shall comply with the new edition or revision, as required by 23 CFR 655.603.

In cases involving Federal-aid projects for new construction, reconstruction, resurfacing, restoration, or rehabilitation of a facility to which this Manual applies, the traffic control devices installed (temporary or permanent) shall comply with the most recent edition of the National MUTCD before that highway is opened or re-opened to the public for unrestricted travel [23 CFR 655.603(d)(2) and (d)(3)].

Unless a particular device is no longer serviceable (see definition in Section 1C.02), non-compliant devices on existing highways and bikeways shall be brought into compliance with the current edition of the National MUTCD as part of the systematic upgrading of substandard traffic control devices (and installation of new required traffic control devices) required pursuant to the Highway Safety Program, 23 U.S.C. §402(a).

Support:

The FHWA has the authority to establish other target compliance dates for implementation of particular changes to the MUTCD [23 CFR 655.603(d)(1)].

Standard:

The target compliance dates established by the FHWA shall be as shown in Table 1B-1.

Design, application, and placement of traffic control devices other than those adopted in this Manual shall be prohibited unless the provisions of Sections 1B.04 through 1B.08 are followed regarding official interpretations, experiments, changes to the MUTCD, and interim approvals granted by the FHWA.

Support:

Many of the provisions in this Manual that are explicitly prohibitive have been included to address practices that have been shown to be ineffective, unsafe, or inconsistent with uniformity. A provision of mandatory or recommended practice represents the accepted and established practice that promotes uniformity and consistency. The absence of a provision in this Manual that explicitly prohibits a particular practice, use, design, application, operation, or other aspect of a traffic control device does not, in itself, constitute acceptability or permission to use the device in a manner not provided for in this Manual.


text:
Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/178

 Bessel inferred that Sirius must have an unseen companion attracting or pulling it as the two stars traveled together around a common center of gravity. In 1862, Mr. of New York detected this companion situated at an angular distance of only 7" from Sirius,—about as far distant as Uranus is from the earth. The larger star is only about twice as massive as its companion but is 20,000 times brighter. The light that we see from Sirius then comes from two stars which together radiate 48 times as much light as the sun. Compared to Sirius, our sun is rather an inconspicuous star, although Barnard gave us great satisfaction by discovering a neighbor not much farther away than Sirius which gives out only $1/2500$ as much light as the sun!

Sirius, the "Dog Star," rests on the nose of the Great Dog, in the constellation Canis Major, and may be found in a straight line from the three evenly spaced stars in Orion's Belt. He was originally Orion's hunting dog, and, as if to give atmosphere to a hunting scene in the sky, Lepus, the Hare, has been placed on a constellation just in front of Sirius and below the feet of Orion, where he is "pursued continually through all time" by the Dog with the huge star.

A vividly red variable star glows in the constellation of Lepus, the Hare. Every so often, this little star becomes radiantly red. This additional light is caused by the star bursting explosively through the layer of absorbent vapors which are smothering the life from its flames. Some day this crimson star will flare and flicker for the last time and its final ray be wafted to our earth—the Swan Song of a dying star.

About 9 o'clock during the first part of December, Sirius rises on its pathway south of east, the brilliant beauty of its light adding to the celestial scene like a torch among a thousand candles. This is true though the month of December exhibits the loveliest assembly of stars to be seen in all the year.

title: Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/178


text:
Amores

 * Amores, a book of poetry by Ovid
 * Amores (1916), a poetry collection by D. H. Lawrence

title: Amores


text:
Page:Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways, 11th Edition (December 2023).pdf/46

Page 6 Guidance:

Agencies should contact the FHWA when considering employing a practice or application that is not explicitly addressed in this Manual to ensure continued compliance with the provisions in this Manual.

Support:

The FHWA reviews and interprets the provisions in this Manual for agencies on an as-needed basis, which can lead to the issuance of official interpretations (see Section 1B.04), or interim approvals (see Section 1B.07).

Standard:

A non-compliant traffic control device that is being replaced or refurbished because it is damaged, missing, or no longer serviceable (see definition in Section 1C.02) for any reason shall be replaced with a compliant device, except as provided for in Paragraph 13 of this Section.

Option:

A non-compliant traffic control device may be replaced in kind when engineering judgment indicates it is more appropriate because:
 * A. One compliant device in the midst of a series of adjacent non-compliant devices would be confusing to road users, and/or
 * B. The schedule for replacement of the whole series of non-compliant devices will result in achieving timely compliance with the MUTCD.

Section 1B.04

Support:

The FHWA issues authoritative interpretations of this Manual when necessary to provide clarity in response to unique situations for device application or general requests for clarification of a provision.

An interpretation includes a consideration of the application and operation of standard traffic control devices, the official meanings of standard traffic control devices, or the variations from standard device designs and design requirements.

Guidance:

Requests for an interpretation of this Manual should contain the following information:
 * A. A concise statement of the interpretation being sought;
 * B. A description of the condition that provoked the need for an interpretation;
 * C. Any illustration that would be helpful to understand the request; and
 * D. Any supporting research data that is pertinent to the item to be interpreted.

Support:

Section 1B.08 contains information on submitting a request for interpretation.

Section 1B.05

Support:

Requests for experimentation (see Section 1B.08) include consideration of field deployment for the purpose of testing or evaluating a new traffic control device, its application or manner of use, or a provision not specifically described in this Manual.

Standard:

A traffic control device or application that does not comply with the provisions of this Manual shall not be used on any street, highway, bikeway, or site roadway open to public travel (see definition in Section 1C.02) without first receiving official approval to experiment from the FHWA’s Office of Transportation Operations.

Support:

A request for permission to experiment (see Section 1B.08) will be considered only when submitted by the public agency or toll facility authority responsible for the operation of the road or street on which the experiment is to take place. For a site roadway open to public travel, the request will be considered only if it is submitted by the private owner or official having jurisdiction.

A request for experimentation with a novel device or application across multiple jurisdictions as a single experiment with a common hypothesis, evaluation plan, and evaluation team will be considered when submitted jointly by all the authorities responsible for operation of the roads or streets on which the experiment is to take place. Similarly, a request to add experimental sites to an experimentation approved for another jurisdiction will be considered when submitted jointly by the all the authorities for operation of the roads or streets on which the experiment is then to take place.

Manufacturers or inventors of novel devices are encouraged to engage the services of a qualified traffic engineer or other professional who is versed in traffic control devices. Early engagement during the concept and development processes will help ensure the efficacy of the device with regard to human factors, operational, safety, and other considerations prior to an agency requesting experimentation. Sect. 1B.03 to 1B.05