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“A new and excellent translation.”—Standard.

“The new English version of the German national epic is by no means the first that has been brought out. But it is probably the best of the five or six that have appeared.”—Speaker.

“A word may be said in praise of Miss Alice Horton’s metrical translation.”—Times.

“It is most fitting that ‘Bohn’s Libraries’ should include this truly magnificent piece of literature. ‘The Lay of the Nibelungs’ is the glory of the German nation, and justly so. Some archeologists claim for the poem an antiquily which loses ilself in the mists of ancient times, and it is not the least of its merits that it may be read to-day with eagerness and enjoyment.”—''Liverpea! Daily Mercury.''

“There have been other attempts to translate the ‘Nibelungen Lied’ from the quaint old Frankish dialect of the original, but of the three that have appeared in verse this latest essay is by far the most satisfactory.”—Daily Chronicle.

“The best metrical version of this fine poem that has yet appeared.” Morning post.

“It may be commended as a painstaking and meritorious effort to repraduce the great Northern epic in good Bible English, and in metre as near the original as may be.”—Scotsman.

“Mr. Bell has given us a very complete English edition of the ‘Nibelungen Lied,’ including the well-known essay by Carlyle, with notes new and old, a facsimile page from the St. Gall manuscript of the poem, and an index of proper names. Miss Horton’s translation is very successful, and goes a long way towards overcoming the natural objection which many people entertain against renderings of long foreign poems in English verse. As the editor says, a more or less close approximation is all that can be hoped for; and this particular version is as close to the form and spirit of the original as any other which we have seen.”—Educational Times.

“Miss Alice Horton has translated the Lay into fluent and easy verse, not very striking, nor, indeed, intending or pretending (observe the modest ‘metrically’) to be so, but distinctly pleasant and easy to read. Possibly a little more labour of correction, expended on certain places where the metre halts or the rhymes creak, would have been an improvement. But these 2,379 stanzas, each of four thirteen-syllabled verse, must have cost no little pains as it is, and we are much obliged to the translator for presenting the old epic in a shape which makes it easy to assimilate. . . . An index of names follows the translation, a useful addition in so complex a tale. Carlyle’s admirable essay, written when his style was at its best (in 1831), is prefixed.”—Spectator.


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PREAMBLE

ARTICLES

Rh

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


text:
Author:Hester Lucy Stanhope

Works

 * Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope as related by herself in Conversations with her Physician
 * Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, forming the Completion of her Memoirs narrated by her Physician (three volumes)
 * Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, forming the Completion of her Memoirs narrated by her Physician: Volume 1
 * Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, forming the Completion of her Memoirs narrated by her Physician: Volume 2
 * Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, forming the Completion of her Memoirs narrated by her Physician: Volume 3

title: Author:Hester Lucy Stanhope


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 FANTASY IN TWO ACTS AND SEVEN SCENES


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text: Constitution of India (2020)

title: Constitution of India (2020)


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Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/352

Rh description, consisting of huts with raised earthen floors, the whole of which may have cost from ten to sixty rupees.

In those instances—and they are not few—in which the teachers are too poor to erect separate apartments, they are constrained to give their instructions within their own dwellings. In these also the stranger students are lodged and fed, and pursue their studies, whether by night or by day.

Since, then, instruction is given gratuitously nearly to all, and food and lodging in addition, to so large a proportion, it may naturally be asked, whence do the teachers acquire the means of accomplishing all this? As the inquiry is fraught with interest, inasmuch as it tends to throw much light on the whole internal economy of learned or scholastic Hinduism, we shall quote Mr. Adam’s full and lucid statement on the subject:—

“The custom of inviting learned men on the occasion of funeral obsequies, marriages, festivals, &c., and at such times of bestowing gifts on them proportioned in value and amount to the estimation in which they are held as teachers, is general amongst those Hindus who are of sufficiently pure caste to be considered worthy of the association of Brahmans. The presents bestowed consist of two parts—first, articles of consumption, principally various sorts of food; and, second, gifts of money. In the distribution of the latter, at the conclusion of the celebration, a distinction is made between sabdikas, philologers, or teachers of general literature—smarttas, teachers of law—and naiyayikas, teachers of logic,—of whom the first class ranks lowest, the second next, and the third highest. The value of the gifts bestowed rises not merely with the acquirements of the individual in his own department of learning, but with the dignity of the department to which he has devoted his chief labours, and in which he is most distinguished. It does not, however, follow that the professors of the most highly honoured branch of learning are always on the whole the most highly rewarded; for in Rajshahi, logic, which, by the admission of all, ranks highest, from whatever cause, is not extensively cultivated, and has few professors, and these receive a small number of invitations, and consequently of gifts, in proportion to the limited number of their pupils, and the practical disuse of the study. Their total receipts, therefore, are not superior, and even not equal to the emoluments enjoyed by learned men of an inferior grade, who have moreover a source of profit in the performance of ceremonial recitations on public occasions, which the pride or self-respect of the logicians will not permit them to undertake. Whatever the amount, it is from the income thus obtained that the teachers of the different classes and grades are enabled to build school-houses, and to provide food and lodging for their scholars: but several have assured me that, to meet these expenses, they have often incurred debt, from which they are relieved only by the occasional and unexpected liberality of individual benefactors.

“When a teacher of learning receives such an invitation as is above described, he generally takes one or two of his pupils with him, giving each pupil his turn of such an advantage in due course; and when the master of the


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 For a moment she stared exploringly round the unfamiliar, bright little room crowded so horribly, cruelly close with herself, her mistake, and the life- long friend loomed so suddenly and undesirably into a man. Then with a quick, shuddery blink her eyes came flashing back wetly and wistfully to the unsolved, inscrutable face before her. Her fingers dug themselves frantically into his cheviot shoul- ders.

"Oh,Drew, Drew" she blurted out, "I am so very very very frightened ! Won't you please take me and play you are my Mother?"

"Play I am your Mother? Play I am your Mother!" The phrase ripped out of Drew s lips like an oath, and twitched itself just in time in to explosive, husky mirth. "Play I am your Mother?" The teeniest grimace over his left shoul der outlined the soft silken swish and tug of a lady's train. A most casual tap at his belt seemed to achieve instantly the fashionable hour-glass outline of feminine curves. "Play I am your Mother" He smiled and, stooping down, took Ruth's scared white face between his hands, and his smile was as bright and just about as pleasant as a zigzag of lightning from a storm-black sky.

"Ruthy dear," he said, " I don t feel very much like your Mother. Now if it was a cannibal that you wanted, or a pirate, or a kidnapper, or a body-

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 snatcher, or a general all-round robber of widows and orphans, why, here I am, all dressed and trained and labeled for the part. But a Mother" The smile went zigzagging again across his face just as a big, wet, scalding tear came trickling down the girl's cheek into his fingers. The feeling of that tear made his heart cramp unpleasantly. "Oh, hang it all," he finished abruptly, " what does a Mother do, anyway ?"

The little white face in his hands flooded instantly with a great desolation ."I don't know," she moaned wearily. "I never knew."

For some inexplainable reason Aleck Reese's dev- ilish, insolent beauty flaunted itself suddenly before Drew's vision, and he gave a bitter gasp, and turned away fiercely, and brushed his arm potently across his forehead as though Sex, after all, were nothing but a trivial mask that fastened loosely to the ears.

When he turned round again, his conquered face had that strange, soft, shining, translucent wonder- look in it which no woman all her life long may reap twice from a man's face. Tenderly, serenely, un- caressingly, without passion and without playful ness, he picked up his sad little bride and carried her back to the big, roomy, restful chair, and snuggled her down in his long arms, with her smoke-scented hair across his cheek, and told her funny, giggly little stories, and crooned her funny, sleepy

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 little songs, till her shuddering sobs soothed them selves oh, so slowly into lazy, languid, bashful little smiles, and the lazy, languid, bashful little smiles droned off at last into nestling, con tented little sighs, and the nestling, contented little sighs blossomed all of a sudden into merciful, peace ful slumber.

Then, when the warm, gray June dawn was just beginning to flush across the roofs of the city, he put her softly down and slipped away, and took his smallest military brushes, and his smallest dressing- gown, and his smallest slippers, and carried them out to his diminutive guest-room. "It is n't a very big little guest-room," he mused disconsolately, "but then, she is n't a very big little guest. It will hold her, I guess, as long as she s willing to stay."

"As long as she's willing to stay." The phrase puckered his lips. Again Aleck Reese's face flashed before him in all its amazing beauty and magical pathos, a face this time staring across a tiny, ornate cafe table into the jaded, world-wise eyes of some gorgeous woman of the theatrical demi-monde. At the vision Drew's shoulders squared suddenly as though for a fair fight to the finish, and then wilted down with equal abruptness as his eyes met acci dentally in the mirror his own plain, matter-of-fact reflection. The sight fairly mocked him. There was no beauty there. No magie. No brilliance.

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WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a [SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC] and to secure to all its citizens:

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;

and to promote among them all

FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the [unity and integrity of the Nation];

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.


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 No talent. No compelling moodiness. No possible promise of " Love and Fame and Far Lands." Nothing. Just eyes and nose and mouth and hair and an ugly baseball scar on his left cheek. Merci- ful heavens! What had he to fight Aleck Reese with, except the only two virtues that a man may not brag of a decently clean life and an unstaled Love!

Grinning to rekindle his courage, he started tip toeing back along the hall to his bedroom and his kitchen, and rolled up his sleeves and began to clean house most furiously; for even if you are quite des perately in love, and a fairly good man besides, it is just a little bit crowded-feeling and disconcerting to have the lady walk unannounced right into your life and your neckties and your pictures, to say nothing of your last week s unwashed cream-jars.

Frantically struggling with his coffee-pot at seven o clock, he had almost forgotten his minor troubles when a little short, gaspy breath sound made him look up. Huddling her tired-out dress into the am ple folds of his dressing-gown, Ruth stood watching him bashfully.

" Hello ! " he said. "Who are you ?"

"I m Mrs. Andrew Bernard, attorney at law," she announced with stuttering nonchalance, and started off exploringly for the cupboard to find Drew's best green Canton china to deck the kitchen

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 breakfast table. All through the tortuous little meal she sat in absolute tongue-tied gravity, carving her omelet into a hundred infinitesimal pieces and sip ping like a professional coffee-taster at Drew's over- rank concoction. Only once did her solemn face lighten with an inspirational flash that made Drew s heart jump. Then,"Oh, Drew," she exclaimed, " do you think you could go out to the house to-day and see if they fed the lamb?"

" No, I don't," said Drew bluntly, and poured himself out his fifth cup of coffee.

After breakfast, all the time that he was shav ing, she came and sat on the edge of a table and watched him with the same maddening gravity, and when he finally started off for his office she followed him down the whole length of his little hallway. "I like my cave !" she volunteered with sudden so ciability, and then with a great, pink-flushing wave of consciousness she lifted up her face to him and stammered, "Do I kiss you good-by?"

Drew shook his head and laughed. "No," he said, "you don't even have to do that; I'm not much of a kisser," and turned abruptly and grabbed at the handle of the door.

But before he had crossed the threshold she reached out and pulled him back for a moment, and he had to stoop down very far to hear what she wanted to tell him. " It's nothing much, Drew,

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 she whispered. "It's nothing much at all. I just wanted to say that considering how strong they are, and how wild and strange I think men are very gentle creatures. Thank you." And in another instant she had gone back alone to face by crass daylight the tragedy that she had brought into three people's lives.

Certainly in all the days and weeks that followed, Drew never failed to qualify as a "gentle creature." Not a day passed at his office that he did not tele- phone home with the most casual-sounding pleas antry, Is everything all right? Any burnt-bridge smoke in the air?" Usually, clear as his own voice, and sometimes even with a little giggle tucked on at the end, the answer came,"Yes, everything's all right." But now and then over that telephone wire a minor note flashed with unmistakably trem ulous vibration : " N-o, Drew. Oh, could you come right home and take me somewhere?"

Drew's brown cheeks hollowed a bit, perhaps, as time went on, but always smilingly, always frankly and jocosely, he met the occasionally recurrent emergencies of his love-life. Underneath his smile and underneath his frankness his original purpose never flinched and never wavered. With growing mental intimacy and absolute emotional aloofness he forced day by day the image and the conscious ness of his personality upon the girl's plastic mind :

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. Weep no more, the welfare of our kingdom demands the sacrifice. The Prince has learned everything which may be had out of books or from teachers. It is necessary now that he should come to know the world.

. Do you think that it is worth the trouble of knowing? I have no confidence in the world. Shall I expose my son, who is so lovely and innocent, to its risks and temptations?

. We might indeed have confidence could life but detain itself, were it not inevitable that we should be removed from his side in the course of nature while he is still young. The affection of parents is able to raise up walls to protect their children against the evils and the sorrows of life, it can feign for them a world of illusion which is not the real world, but when we die, when our child is called to rule alone over millions of subjects of every condition and class, when he has no longer any friend to love him disinterestedly, to counsel him without malice, to advise him without deception and lies…

. But then what has been the use of all these teachers ?

. That he might become wearied of them, and be led


text: Constitution of India (2020)/Preamble

title: Constitution of India (2020)/Preamble


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ADDISON'S Works. With the Notes of Bishop Hurd, Portrait, and 8 Plates of Medals and Coins. Edited by H. G. Bohn. 6 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

ÆSCHYLUS, The Dramas of. Translated into English Verse by Anna Swanwick. 4th Edition, revised, 5s.

——— The Tragedies of, Translated into Prose by T. A. Buckley, B. A. 3s. 6d..

AGASSIZ and GOULD'S Outline of Comparative Physiology, Enlarged by Dr. Wright. With 399 Woodcuts. 5s.

ALFIERI’S Tragedies. Translates into English Verse by Edgar A. Bowring, C.B. 2 vols, 3s. 6d. each.

ALLEN’S (Joseph, R. N.) Battles of the British Navy. Revised Edition, with 57 Steel Engravings, 2 vols. 5s. each.

'''AMMIANUS MARCELLINGS. History of Rome during the Reigns of Constantius, Julian, Jovianys, Valentinian, and Valens,' Translated by Prof. C. D. Yonge, M. A. 7s. 6d''.

ANDERSEN’S Danish Legends and Fairy Tales. Translated by Caroline Peachey. With 120 Wood Engravings. 5s.

ANTONINUS (M. Aurelius), The Thoughts of. Trans. literally, with Notes and introduction by George Long, M. A. 35. 3s. 6d.

'''APOLLONIUS RHODIUS. ‘The Argonautica.’''' Translated by E. P. Coleridge, B.A.

APPIAN’S Roman History. Translated by Horace White, M. A., LL. D. With Maps and Illustrations. 2 vols. 5s. each.

APULEIUS, The Works of. Comprising the Golden Ass, God of Socrates, Florida, and Discourse of Magic. 5s.

ARIOSTO’S Orlando Furioso. Translated into English Verse by W.S. Rose. With Portrait, and 24 Steel Engravings. 2 vols, 5s. each.

ARISTOPHANES’ Comedies. Translated by W. J. Hickie. 2 vols. 5s. each.


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 to prefer the reading of fairy-tales and enchantments to their musty lessons. Does that seem little to you?

. Does it satisfy you? Would it not have been better to have taught him the fairy-tales first and afterward the realities of science?

. By no means! The proper course is first to assure ourselves of the firm ground, and then to scatter the lighter earth upon it, in which roses may bloom—not to throw upon the flowers hard stones and solid rock. We should shape our lives like a Gothic cathedral, well cemented, and buttressed like a fortress below, but flowering above in sculptured garlands and miracles of many-colored glass. The mass is lightened, though it is all of stone, until it seems rather to be floating in the air than founded on the ground.

. Very good, no doubt. Although I fail to see what all this has to do with the journey of our son.

. His journey is the bridge which we must build for him between truth and illusion. Life itself is such a bridge, and it stretches from one to the other, and unites and blends them in such a way as to create out of them all the reality that we know.

. My son!

. I come to ask your blessing.

. This parting is too cruel…

. Remember that you are a queen before you are a mother. Embrace your son, and do not make his courage falter.

. My mother and my Queen! I go content, accompanied by my faithful servitors, my preceptor and my Tony.

. Have you packed the bags without forgetting anything?


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 it must be an artistic achievement: the Poem may be quite true in human nature generically; but it is never true as a real narrative:—it borrows a something from history; but it creates ten times more than it borrows. Scarcely then need we say why it is that the Hebrew literature possesses neither Drama nor Epic: the reasons, as we shall presently see, are distinctly two.

The Epic—which is history transmuted into fiction—for a forgone purpose, or in regard to a final cause, has stood foremost in the esteem of every people that has risen above the rudest barbarism—of every people— only excepted; and this one is a people whose literature, mainly poetic as it is, has taken hold of the sympathies of mankind more extensively, and more permanently, than any other. Reasons drawn from a consideration of the social condition of this one people might perhaps be brought forward in explanation of this unique fact; and there would then be room for much ingenuity in showing how we may solve the problem—in some way short of an admission which those who distaste the true reason will labour to exclude. But we take it otherwise.

This series of writers, through the many centuries of their continuous testimony, spoke not, wrote not, as if they possessed a liberty of discursive choice—now scattering the decorations of fiction over realities; and now striving to impart to fiction, in as high a degree as possible, the verisimilitude of


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. What have you there?

. Books for our studies.

. I have plenty of good food to eat, which is what we shall need most.

. My son, I know it is the King's wish that you travel without pomp or show, as the royal treasury may not become the loot of spendthrifts. But your mother has hoarded these few pieces of money for your use; they were a present from the King to buy me an ermine robe. The one which I am now wearing is somewhat moth-eaten, alas, but until your return I shall have no heart for aught but friezes and coarse flannels.

. Aha! So that all the tailors and dressmakers in the kingdom will turn republican? You will buy the robe, my dear, and comport yourself as befits your royal station.

. You, my good servants, take good care of your Prince…

. He will return a sage.

. I shall bring him back well and fat.

. Which is more important. Be careful what you eat. Above all else, do not permit him to stuff himself with tunny fish, roast chestnuts, or gum-drops. The Prince has always had a hankering for such things. Remember that he is heir to the throne.

. The kingdom will acclaim in him a ruler wise and just.

. Has he plenty of clean underclothes?

. Of all kinds, your Majesty.

. Where are the three dozen pocket-handkerchiefs I embroidered for you?

. Here, mother… but I never heard that princes used more than one fine pocket-handkerchief on their travels, which must have a lace border, nor that they ever had need


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 truth. They spoke and wrote with a consciousness of their obligation to absolute Truth, and with a stern fixedness of purpose as toward an authority above them: among no other writers do we find a parallel instance of determinate purpose. But whether distinctly conscious of their mission, or not so; or only imperfectly conscious of it, yet they spoke as they were moved by Him who is the —the "truthful God." Solemnly regardful were these "holy men of God" of the sovereignty of Truth—Truth dogmatic or theological—Truth ethical, and Truth historical. Utterly averse, therefore, were they—abhorrent, let us say—not merely as toward falsification, but as toward fabrication, or any approach toward that sort of commingling of the real with the unreal which might engender falseness; or might give rise to a dangerous confounding of the two. The Hebrew Scriptures, as compared with any other national literature, are pre-eminently—they are characteristically—they, and they alone, are throughout truthful in tone, style, and structure. Need we ask, then, why they contain neither the Drama nor an Epic? Not from the want of fitting subjects—not from poverty of materials; but as ministers of Heaven to whom a task had been assigned, did these men of genius—and they were such—fail to display their skill in the creation of romances; it was not because they could not do it, that they have not attempted to immortalize themselves, and the heroes of their national history, in producing


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 of clean clothes. Fairy stories say nothing about these things. Princes ride through forests and scale mountains, they are caught in terrible showers, they swim lakes and ford rivers, but they never soil their clothes.

. Does that immunity extend to their servants?—because I should hate to have anything happen to this coat, which is the best of the two that I have.

. Come, you must hurry and be off before nightfall.

. My father and my lord! My mother!…

. Write every day.

. But will the letters arrive?

. Yes, the King has given strict orders to assure prompt delivery of the mails.

. Not so bad! The public always profits somehow from the travelling of princes.

. Good-by! Good-by! You have not forgotten the milk of magnesia?

. Oh, woman, woman! Will you never learn how to attach to a moment proper dignity and importance?

. Your Majesty, can anything be more important than these homely cares of a mother?

. Good-by! Good-by! Good-by!


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348 feast bestows a gift of money on the teacher, it is always accompanied by a present to the pupil less in amount, but proportioned to the respectability of the teacher’s character and the extent of his attainments. The teacher sometimes takes a favorite pupil more frequently than others, the object being to give a practical proof of the success of his instructions, as well as to accustom the pupil to the intercourse of learned and respectable society. As the student is furnished with instruction, food, and lodging without cost, the only remaining sources of expense to him are his books, clothes, and minor personal expenses, all of which, exclusive of books, are estimated to cost him in no case more, and often less, than seven rupees per annum. His books he either inherits from some aged relative, or, at his own expense and with his own hands, he copies those works that are used in the college as text-books. In the latter case the expense of copying includes the expense of paper, pen, ink, ochre, and oil. The ochre is mixed with the gum of the tamarind seed, extracted by boiling, and the compound is rubbed over the paper, which is thus made impervious to insects, and capable of bearing writing on both sides. The oil is for light, as most of the labour of copying is performed by night, after the studies of the day have been brought to a close. An economical student is sometimes able, with the presents he receives when he accompanies his teacher to assemblies, both to defray these expenses and to relieve the straitened circumstances of his family at a distance. I have learned, on good authority, that ten and even twenty rupees per annum have been saved and remitted by a student to his family; but the majority of students require assistance from their families, although, I am assured, that what they receive probably never in any case exceeds four rupees per annum.”

To the subject-matter of learned instruction, it is scarcely possible, within our narrow limits, to do more than briefly allude. From the preceding statement, it has appeared that there are “three principal classes into which the teachers and schools of Hindu learning are divided. The acquirements of a teacher of logic in general pre-suppose those of a teacher of law; and the acquirements of the latter in general pre-suppose those of a teacher of general literature, who, for the most part, has made very limited attainments beyond those of his immediate class.” As a preliminary remark equally applicable to all the classes, it may be stated, that “the youths who commence the study of Sanskrit are expected to have acquired, either at home or in a Bengali school, merely a knowledge of Bengali writing and reading, and a very slight acquaintance with the rules of arithmetic, viz., addition and subtraction, without a knowledge of their application. Hence, learned Hindus having entered with these superficial acquirements at an early age on the study of Sanskrit, and having devoted themselves almost exclusively to its literature, are ignorant of almost everything else.”

The chief object of the first or lowest department, which is that of philology and general literature, is, “the knowledge of language as an instrument for the communication of ideas.” A full course of instruction in it embraces grammar, the most extensive and profound treatises on which, such as, the


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 an Oriental Iliad, or Odyssey, or Æneid. To have done this would have been to introduce among their people an element of confusion and of ambiguity, which would have interfered with the purpose of the separation of this race from all other races.

And yet this is not all that should be said; and the second reason would be by itself sufficient in solving the problem; and, not less than the first, is it conclusively demonstrative of the Divine origination of these writings. Because they are Inspired——and teach the things of God, and enjoin the worship of God, therefore do the writers abstain from themes which give licence to the worship of man:—they take no account of heroes; and yet it was not so that an ambitious poet, who might be thirsting for the applause of his countrymen, could find no subject in the national history adapted to his purpose. Why not, in this manner, undertake to immortalize Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon? Why not? It was because the Hebrew Scriptures, dictated from above, are constantly and sternly truthful;—and they are so whether the great men of the Hebrew polity were as faultless as national fondness would have painted them; or were indeed as faulty as men at the best ever are.

It has been the ambition—and a noble ambition, of the most highly gifted minds, in every cultured people, to give expression to a perfect ideal of humanity—to picture a godlike virtue, wisdom, valour, self-control, and temperance, according to the na-


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 tional conception of what these qualities should be. Among the thousand themes of poetry, this one—the imaging of a godlike magnanimity and virtue—has held the highest place.

The Hebrew literature gives the several elements of virtue and piety in precept; but nowhere is it presented in the concrete. In place of the dazzling Ideal—the romance of humanity—we find only the real human nature of history—vouched for as such by the presence of those conditions of human frailty which the Idealist would have taken care to exclude. A circumstance full of meaning it is, that, in these writings, all that we learn of the acts, and of the personal qualities of the prominent persons of the national history, is found in the narrative and prosaic books, or portions of books:—none of it appears in the poetic books, or in those passages the style of which is figurative and impassioned; and which, as to its form, is metrical. What then is the import of these facts, which have no parallels in the national poetry of other countries? It is this, that whenever the individual man comes forward in these writings—whenever it is he who draws upon himself the eyes of his fellows, whether chief or prophet, he must do so—such as he is:—if his virtue, his wisdom, his valour, are to attract notice, so do his sins, his weaknesses, his falls, in the moments of severest trial; all these things make their appearance also, and proclaim the veraciousness of the record.


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 Greatly do we often miscalculate the relative credibility or incredibility of passages in ancient writings. No logic—or no sound logic—can make it appear incredible that God should raise the dead; or that He should make the waters of the sea to stand up as a heap; or that, in any other mode, the should show. But utterly incredible would be the pretension that any congeries of events, such as are usually packed together by a poet with a definite artistic intention, has ever actually had existence in the current of the world's affairs. Utterly beyond the limits of reasonable belief would be the supposition that a man— even one of ourselves—has ever acted and spoken, from year to year, throughout his course, with unfailing consistency, or in that style of dramatic coherence which the contriver of a Romance, or of an Epic, figures for his hero. No such embodiment of the Ideal has ever, we may be sure, broken in upon the vulgar realities of human existence;—there have been good men, and brave men, and wise men, often; but there have been no living sculptures after the fashion of Phidias, no heroes after the manner of Homer or Virgil.

Then there comes before us another balancing of the incredible and the credible:—as thus. The Hebrew Poets—it is not one or two of them, but all of them in long series—have abstained from those idealizings of humanity at large upon which the poets of other nations have chosen to expend their powers.


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 How is it that they should have been thus abstinent—should thus have held off from ground which tempts every aspiring mind? We shall find no admissible answer to this question, except this, that this series of writers followed, not the impulses of their individual genius, but each of them wrote as he was inspired from above. Nothing in any degree approaching to a worshipping of man—nothing of that sort which elsewhere has been so common—nothing which could have given a warrant to the unwise extravagances of the saint-and-martyr worship of the Church in the third century, anywhere makes its appearance within the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament. On the contrary—as well by solemn injunction, as by their uniform example—the Inspired writers, historians, prophets, poets, repeat the warning—as to the rendering of worship to man, or to any creature—"See thou do it not: worship God."


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. Where are we? You said that we should be in a village within an hour. And now you see… We are lost.

. Lost! Lost, indeed! I must consult the topographical map of the kingdom—the latest published by the Royal Geographical Society.

. I told you that we were not taking the right road.

. But was I to trust myself to you rather than to the Royal Geographical Society?

. You would have done better if you had trusted yourself to me, for I have been over that road more than a hundred times, night and day.

. Without knowing where you were going.

. But I got there. And now who knows where we are?

. We have our choice here of two roads.

. Say rather of one, for this is not a road, nor a trail, nor can it lead anywhere. It is a tangle full of briers and rocks. This is the road we ought to take. It is so clean and well kept that it must lead to some large city.

. You are a fool. That is so as to tempt us to take it. Don't you know that in all the stories the good roads are the treacherous ones, which lead to the castle of some terrible ogre, who does not hesitate to swallow the poor trav- 7


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 ellers the moment they arrive? On the other hand, the thorny paths lead to gardens and palaces of good fairies and good kings where beautiful princesses dwell, who languish for noble princes who appear to fall in love.

. It may be as you say; but, to my mind, things are as their beginning, and I never saw a thing end well that began badly, and it is easy enough for it to end badly when it has begun well. But when in doubt pluck a hair from the wolf, and as the face is, so is the man. Believe me, we ought to choose this road. Don't you hear music and birds singing, and nothing on this side—only the whistling wind, and birds of evil cry?

. Ah, how can you be so ignorant! This, this is the right road. This is the way the path of virtue always looks—I have seen it in the pictures—and this is the broad and easy path of vice. Don't you think so. Master?

. I do not think anything, now that I have been deceived by the Royal Geographical Society. I must consult my books.

. Here comes a beautiful lady who will be able to tell us the road.

. Good morning, gentlemen.

. Beautiful lady, can you tell us where we are and whither these two roads lead?

. I can tell you this—that this is not a road, and it does not lead anywhere.

. Didn't I tell you?

. Wait!—don't you trust her.

. Are you strangers here? If you wish to rest and take some refreshment, I can offer it to you at my house—which is to say at my husband's house—but a short distance away. All these lands which you see are his, and all the


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 countryside about. He will consider himself greatly honored to receive and to entertain such distinguished guests.

. We shall be charmed ourselves.

. No. This husband whom she speaks of, and these fields and this house—they belong to some terrible ogre!

. It doesn't seem to me that this lady has anything of the ogre about her. She is very courteous and polite.

. Like all ogresses.

. Well, are you coming with me?

. Let us set out at once. Our provisions are getting low, and I have a horrible appetite after so much walking.

. No, I am not going. I shall take this other road.

. Are you mad? Should night overtake you, you will be attacked by wolves or by robbers; you will find only a miserable hovel in which a mad old woman lives…

. What did I tell you? Some good fairy who presents herself in the guise of an old woman, like all good fairies. This, this is my road!

. Don't be foolish, sir! Master, exert your authority.

. Let me alone; I wish to read. It is not possible that these maps could be wrong. Until I know precisely where we are, I shall not stir from this spot.

. But are you crazy? This place is infested with poachers and wood-choppers, and until you reach my husband's house you are not safe.

. Oh, false woman! How easy it is to see through your designs!

. What does he say?

. Nobody minds what he says. But, Master, don't you see? The Prince is determined to venture alone down these by-ways.

. You ought not to let him go.


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. Oho! And you?

. I distrust everything. One road appears to me quite as bad as the other. I shall await you here, studying. Whichever of you arrives first at some habitation may send me back word how he got there.

. But you are here to keep us out of trouble.

. This road appears to me very bad, and this woman inspires me with no confidence whatsoever. Her invitations, her insistence upon taking us to her house, when she does not know us…

. Hm! We are in a nice fix! One with his maps and his books of science, the other with his fairy-tales—and I, dead with hunger!

. Come! It will soon be dark, and I must return home. My husband, you know, is the largest landholder in the vicinity for twenty leagues about—he is the richest, the most powerful, although you see me very simply dressed…

. Ah! There is the good old woman, the kind and beneficent fairy! There can be no doubt of it; it must be she. I shall rim to meet her. Don't follow me… I am going alone.

. Ah… and he is gone! Gross negligence upon your part!

. Upon yours.

. What account of the Prince shall we give now to their Majesties?

. What account shall you give? I was merely intrusted with his education.

. Do you consider it education to allow him to do whatever he pleases?

. He will desist when the way grows long and hard.


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OETRY will never disown its relationship to the beautiful and the sublime in the visible world; in fact it has always proved its dependence upon influences of this order. Born and nurtured, not at hazard on any spot, but only in chosen regions, it finds at hand, for giving utterance to the mysteries of the inner life, an abundance of material symbols—fit for purposes of this kind—among the objects of sense. It is the function of Poetry to effect such an assimilation of the material with the immaterial as shall produce one world of thought and of emotion—the visible and the invisible, intimately commingled.

Poetry, nursed on the lap of Nature, will have its preferences—it must make its selection; and this, not merely as to the exterior decorations of its abode, but even as to the solid framework of the country which it favours; there must be, not only a soil, and a climate, and a various vegetation, favourable to its training; but a preparation must have


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. Yes, but if the wolves eat him up first, or the bandits kill him?…

. It was foolish of you to let him go.—Young man! Young man!

. Yes, you might send one of your husband's greyhounds after him; I don't feel like running at the moment myself. Lead me to your house, for I am dying of hunger and thirst.

. Don't worry.

. I have made up my mind to eat, even though your husband should be an ogre and you an ogress.

. What nonsense are you talking now?

. None, none whatever. Only hunger is turning my head. [Aside] If they mean to eat me, they will be sure to feed me first, so that I may get fatter. Do you intend to stay here?

. Yes, I shall remain until I hear from you. I shall follow the one who finds the more commodious shelter.

. But aren't you starved?

. Spiritual food will suffice me.

. A pleasant dinner!… Come along.

. Follow me.

. The Royal Geographical Society cannot possibly make a mistake.


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2

ARISTOTLE’S Nicomachean Ethics. Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by the Venerable Archdeacon Browne. 5s.

——— Politics and Economics. Translated by B. Walford, M. A., with introduction by Dr. Gillies. 5s.

——— Metaphysics. Translated by the Rev. John H. M‘Mahon, M. A. 5s.

——— History of Animals. Trans. by Richard Cresswell, M. A. 5s.

——— Organon; or, Logical Treafises, and the Introduction of Porphyry. Translated by the Rev. O. F. Owen, M. A. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

——— Rhetoric and Poetics. Trans. by T. Buckley, B. A. 5s.

ARRIAN’S Anabasis of Alexander, together with the Indica. Translated by E. J. Chinnock, M. A., LL. D. With Maps and Plans. 5s.

'''ATHENÆUS. The Delpnosophists; or, the Banquet of the Learned.''' Trans. by Prof. C. D. Yonge, M. A. 3 vols. 5s. each.

BACON'S Moral and Historical Works, including the Essays, Apophthegms, Wisdom of the Ancients, New Atlantis, Henry VII, Henry VIII., Elizabeth, Henry Prince of Wales, History of Great Britain, Julius Cæsar, and Augustus Cæsar. Edited by J. Devey, M. A. 3s. 6d.

——— Novum Organum and Advancement of Learning. Edited by J. Devey, M.A. 5s.

BALLADS AND SONGS of the Peasantry of England. Edited by Robert Bell. 3s. 6d.

BASS’S Lexicon to the Greek Testament. 2s.

BAX’S Manual of the History of Philosophy, for the use of Students. By E. Belfort Bax. 5s.

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, their finest Scenes, Lyrics, and other Beauties, selected from the whole of their works, and edited by Leigh Hunt. 3s. 6d.

BECHSTEIN’S Cage and Chamber Birds, their Natural History, Habits, Food, Diseases, and Modes of Capture. Translated, with considerable additions on Structure, Migration, and Economy, by H. G. Adams. Together with. With 43 coloured Plates and Woodcut Illustrations, 5s.

BECKMANN (J.} History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins. 4th edition, revised by W. Francis and J. W. Griffith, 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each.

BEDE’S (Venerable) Ecclesiastical History of England. Together with the. Edited by J. A. Giles, D.C.I. With Map. 5s.

BELL (Sir Charles}. The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression, as connected with the Fine Arts. By Sir Charles Bell, K.II. 7th edition, revised. 5s.

BERKELEY (George}, Bishop of Cloyne, The Works of. Edited by George Sampson. With Biographical Introduction by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P. 3 vols. 5s. each.

BION. See

BJÖRNSON’S Arne and the Fisher Lassie. Translated by W. H. Low, M.A. 3s. 6d.

BLAIR’S Chronological Tables Revised and Enlarged. Comprehending the Chronology and His-


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 been made for it in the remotest geological eras. The requirements of a land that is destined to be the home of poetry have in all instances been very peculiar:—it has sprung up and thriven on countries of very limited extent—upon areas ribbed and walled about by ranges of mountains, or girdled and cut into by seas. These—the duly prepared birth-places of poetry—have been marked by abrupt inequalities of surface—by upheavings and extrusions of the primaeval crust of the earth:—these selected lands have glistened with many rills—they have sparkled with fountains—they have been clothed with ancient forests, as well as decked, each spring anew, with flowers. Moreover a wayward climate, made so by its inequalities of surface, has broken up the wearisome monotony of the year—such as it is in tropical and in arctic regions—by irregular shiftings of the aerial aspect of all things; and there has been, in such countries, a corresponding variety in the animal and vegetable kingdoms;—there has thus been a large store in the Poet's treasury of material symbols.

A land such as this is—or was, three thousand years ago—the country in which the Hebrew Poetry had its birth, and where it reached its maturity, and where it ceased to breathe; nor has it been under conditions very different from these that Poetry has ever sprung up and flourished. It has not been a native of Tartarian steppes, nor of savannahs, or interminable prairies, nor of


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 trackless swamps, nor of irrigated rice-levels, nor of leagues on leagues of open corn-land, nor of Saharas. Poetry has not weathered the tempests, nor confronted the terrors of the Atlas ranges:—it has not sported on the flanks of Caucasus, or on the steeps of the Andes, or the Himalayas; nor has it breathed on the rugged vertebrae of the North American continent. In none of those regions has it appeared which oppress the spirit by a dreary sameness, or by shapeless magnitudes, or featureless sublimity. Poetry has had its birth, and it has sported its childhood, and it has attained its manhood, and has blended itself with the national life in countries such as Greece, with its rugged hills, and its myrtle groves, and its sparkling rills; but not in Egypt:—in Italy; but not on the dead levels of Northern Europe. Poetry was born and reared in Palestine—but not in Mesopotamia:—in Persia—but not in India. Pre-eminently has Poetry found its home among the rural graces of England, and amid the glens of Scotland; and there, rather than in those neighbouring countries which are not inferior to the British Islands in any other products of intellect or of taste.

Exceptions—apparent only, or of a very partial kind—might be adduced in contradiction of these general affirmations. Exceptions there will be to any generalization that touches human nature; for in a true sense the human mind is superior to all exterior conditions; and its individual forces are such as to


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 Rh broke her leg. Don’t let’s bother with your experience. I want to tell mine.

“You are quite mistaken, my dear young friend,” repeated Father Time, “quite wrong.”

“Young friend?” I said, my mind, as one’s mind is apt to in such a case, running to an unimportant detail. “Why do you call me young?”

“Your pardon,” he answered gently—he had a gentle way with him, had Father Time. “The fault is in my failing eyes. I took you at first sight for something under a hundred.”

“Under a hundred?” I expostulated. “Well, I should think so!”

“Your pardon again,” said Time, “the fault is in my failing memory. I forgot. You seldom pass that nowadays, do you? Your life is very short of late.”

I heard him breathe a wistful hollow sigh. Very ancient and dim he seemed as he stood beside me. But I did not turn to look upon him. I had no need to. I knew his form, in the inner and clearer sight of things, as well as every human being knows by innate instinct. theThe [sic] Unseen face and form of Father Time.

I could hear him murmuring beside me, “Short—short, your life is short”; till the sound of it seemed to mingle with the

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 refuse to be absolutely subjected to any formal requirements: greater is the individual man than circumstances of any sort; and greater is he far than materialists would report him to be—according to system. A Poet there may be, wherever Nature shall call him forth; but there will not be Poetry among a people that is not favoured by Nature, as to its home:—the imaginative tastes and the creative genius have been, as to the mass of the people, indigenous to Greece; but not to Egypt: to Italy; but not to France: to the British Islands; but not to Holland. And thus too, it was the ancient people of Palestine, pre-eminently, that possessed a poetry which was quite its own. But then we must be looking back a three thousand years, as to the people; and we must be thinking of the country, such as it was in the morning hours of Biblical time. In later ages—the people fallen! and the land mourning its hopeless desolation!

Palestine, rather than any other country that might be named, demands the presence, and needs the industry of man, for maintaining its fertility. Capable, as it has been, of supporting millions of people, those millions must actually be there; and then only will it justify its repute as a "very good land." A scanty population will starve, where a dense population would fatten. On this land, emphatically, is the truth exemplified—that "the hand of the diligent maketh rich:"—it is here that, if man fails of his duty, or if he misunderstands his


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What We Learned about Wood

Administration Building of the Forest Products Laboratory. The Organisation Occupies This and Nine other Buildings, All on the Campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison HE man from Madison, Wisconsin, felt a surcharge of hostility in the convention atmosphere when he rose to speak. All the eloquence, argumentative power and resource of the Baltimore delegation had been thrown in support of the three-nail policy. All the preceding speakers had declared themselves for a continuation of the same scheme for holding packing boxes together. Among the hundred-odd canners, box manufacturers and wholesale grocers, assembled in joint committee, perhaps a few might listen without prejudice. Most, however, would be thinking of the changes his proposal would necessitate in the nailing machines, and not of the advantages he portrayed.

Straightforwardly he quoted the findings of the Forest Products Laboratory, telling the delegates that boxes made to standard specifications would stand up in service far better if held with six nails to the edge than if nailed with only three.

Back came the quick question: "How many actual tests on these particular packing boxes have been performed by your laboratory?"

"Four hundred and twenty-six in total.”

The Baltimore canner smiled broadly.

“That sort of evidence scarcely should be admitted," he said. “My firm has been using these boxes for years; we have shipped upward of thirty million, and we know exactly the service a box will give.”

That seemed to clinch the matter. The convention adjourned, making no recommendation for a change in existing practice. The Forest Products expert had wasted his time, it seemed.

Several of the box manufacturers had said nothing in convention, however. Immediately afterward these men summoned the delegation from Baltimore and asked that one hundred Number Three can boxes, nailed in regular fashion, be shipped to Madison for comparative test. The Forest Products representative was notified that he should prepare for a buffeting tournament, in which the stamina of the respective containers would be demonstrated. He was delighted, for he knew just what his big compression-on-edge and hazard machines would do to boxes held by three nails to the edge.

Without a qualm as to the outcome of the tests the Baltimore men assented. It was not until some of the boxes were actually dropping and sliding round in the hazard machine that any of them evinced a desire to hedge.

The Results of the Test Boxes Held by Three Nails to the Edge Proved Too weak. This No. 3 Can Shipping Case Stood Eleven Thumps Before its Contents Spilled. The Photograph Shows the Inside of the Big "Hazard Machine" Used for Box Testing HE machine—which, with its smaller nephew in the laboratory, is unique—is a mechanism constructed to give a box, in ten minutes, all the hard knocks the container might normally receive on a freight or express trip of one thousand miles. It is a hexagonal wheel, revolving vertically. On the inside faces ridges of wood and metal project, with here and there a sharp point, made to do the same damage to a box that might be accomplished by the corner of another packing box. Each time the wheel revolves the box being tested drops six times, a meter keeping accurate count of the thumps. Each box of the same size put in gets identically the same treatment; so it is fair to all. In the tournament arranged by the Forest Products expert the three-nail boxes came off a decisive second best. A few turns of the wheel at low speed spilled their contents, the edge joints proving to be far too weak. The boxes held by six nails stood more than twice the racket; while the demonstrations of seven and nine nail containers were even more impressive.

At the conclusion of the tests even the Baltimore delegation expressed itself unanimously in favor not only of using six but of adopting seven nails for a box edge as common practice! The Forest Products expert was delegated the task of rewriting the specifications to be used henceforth. The service rendered to industry in this case is a fair example of the manner in which the Forest Products experts solve any container problems presented to them. When such a problem rises they either possess comprehensive data gleaned from the hundred of thousands of timber tests they have made or they are prepared to secure experimental data immediately.

Just after the United States entered the war the Ordnance Department decided to let contracts for $3,000,000 worth of containers for overseas shipping. The published specifications called for white pine boxes of definite sizes to be used for packing shell, powder, guns and other matériel. The notice urged that bids be submitted immediately, as there was pressing need for the boxes. Two weeks after the specifications had been sent out the Ordnance Department — in a condition of excitement closely approaching panic — summoned the aid of the Forest Products Laboratory. Not a single bid had been received!

In studying the situation and specifications it was found at the laboratory that two main factors kept the box manufacturers from submitting bids: First was the scarcity of white pine, and second was the fact that the box sizes mentioned were such as to require the sawing of new lumber for the work. The plan in use up to that time had been radically different; waste ends of lumber had been utilized for boxes by all the manufacturers. The Forest Products Laboratory rewrote the specifications, substituting a group of woods— hard maple, dogwood, holly, wahoo, yellow buckeye, witch-hazel, rhododendron, mountain laurel, haw, orange wood, torchwood, mastic, yellow cedar, Sitka cypress, red cedar and piñion— for white pine, though not outlawing the latter. Then it designed new boxes for the war matériel, making these of sizes that could be cut from waste lumber. When the new specifications were published the Ordnance Department received bids by return mail.

Real Money Savers

HROUGH the case of the white-pine boxes the work of the Forest Product Laboratory won increased respect from the Ordnance Department, and late in 1917 an agreement was reached whereby many of the container problems of this Department were submitted to the laboratory.

Immediately results began to show. The laboratory demonstrated the advantage of using cement-coated nails instead of wooden screws for rope-handle cleats on ammunition boxes. They tested and redesigned most of the boxes used by the department, strengthening and improving—in most cases without raising the cost of the individual container.

Some of the boxes were found to be space wasters. In redesigning one destined to carry 140 pounds of cannon powder, for example, fourteen per cent cargo space was saved. Cargo space just then was costing the Government six dollars a cubic foot.

A school for government packers was established, and more than three hundred men were trained in the construction and packing of overseas containers. One of the men so trained redesigned a box being used for overseas shipment while at the laboratory. His new design was snapped up; it saved $50,000 to the Government on the first contract alone, and more than $100.000 in freight in six months of use.

Other striking examples of how money was saved by redesigning boxes are many. In one case a container intended to hold thirty one-pound cans of saddle soap was refashioned with a saving of forty-three per cent. On the first shipment, 3,000,000 pounds, the Government is said to have saved $414,000.

Another crate to carry two Browning automatic machine rifles with their equipment was made over with a saving of twenty-eight per cent. This amounted to $5.37 in cargo space, which sum, added to forty cents saved on the lumber in each crate, put $5.77 in Uncle Sam’s pocket every time two of the guns went overseas—and for months the shipments exceeded 900 guns a day.

A full third of the total space necessary for packing United States army rifles, 1917 model, was reclaimed by the new box designed by Forest Products experts. This saved $1,500,000 each time a million Enfield-Springfields crossed the Atlantic. Just as the laboratory solved the puzzles of the can shippers and the Ordnance Department it now stands ready to conquer the shipping-container problems for all private businesses that care to consult its experts. The points of nailing strength and space efficiency only hint at the many phases to the question. How many shippers know that the strength of their package is dependent directly upon the percentage of moisture in the wood at the time it is nailed? How many have taken into consideration the psychology of stevedores in building export boxes?

Saving Space on the Cars

OTH of these points — the two showing how divergent are the investigations at the laboratory — matter immensely. If a box made of wet wood is nailed and then shipped to a hot arid country the wood shrinks. This leaves large spaces round the nails, and the box loses at least a quarter of its total strength.

On the docks at St.-Nazaire, France, a few months ago stevedores were unloading packages from the United States intended for our boys in France. When one of the workers found a package that looked as if its contents might suit him an accident occurred. He tripped over a pile of rope — or his own Number Twelves, if no better obstacle offered. The box he carried landed on end; and if it proved weak in construction — well, the supposed recipient of the consignment was in hard luck that day. This incident explained fully why many of our boys waited in vain for the presents mailed them by fond relatives over here, and also showed how much unexpected stress boxes have to stand at times.

In ordinary freight handling, employees are not so apt to allow this sort of accident. The precaution has to be observed, however, of making the boxes of the right size and weight to facilitate handling, not dumping. It is human nature to lift a small, relatively heavy package from car to platform. It is just as natural to allow a bulkier box to drop the three or four feet intervening.

For the express purpose of finding just the sort of fiber container that would give the best shock insulation, strength and the least liability to being thrown from the car to platform the Westinghouse and General Electric Companies recently smashed up $4000 worth of lamps in experiments at the Forest Products Laboratory. Containers that eliminated more than half the accidents and breakage were discovered by this means. For the two months preceding the signing of the armistice— during which period overseas shipping containers designed by the Forest Products Laboratory had been used, in the main— the Government losses caused by breakage and box failures had been reduced to fifteen per cent of the amount suffered previously on shipments to France! A large percentage of this saving must be credited directly to the work of the laboratory.

What the work of these experts may mean to industry in the United States is indicated by estimates made by Dr. A. W. Bitting, secretary of the National Canners’ Association, and Col. D. W. Dunne, chief ordnance inspector of the Bureau of Explosives. According to figures given out by these men an average saving of thirty-five per cent can be made on all package shipping! This means that in times of stress on the railroads when car shortages loom, more than a third more packages can be carried in the space now given over to this branch of freight shipping! It means also an enormous saving for individual businesses that are willing to concede the Forest Products Laboratory the ability to assist them — in most cases without charge. Colonel Dunne advances the suggestion that if Federal control of railways continues for a few months longer freight packages of efficient design may be introduced universally. The same purpose might be accomplished as easily through the instrumentality of the Interstate Commerce Commission, however. The reason for placing the responsibility upon either Government or the Interstate Commerce Commission lies in the fact that it would be business suicide for one railroad or group of roads to attempt to dictate to shippers — even to the manifest pecuniary advantage of the shippers themselves. The road or group of roads simply would find their business transferred to their less scrupulous competitors.

Though the results achieved in box designing are bound to save money for every United States business man who ships goods in any sort of container, this is only one phase of the Forest Products Laboratory’s usefulness. It was interested in doing things with boxes simply because boxes are made of wood, of paper or of fiber obtained from wood. Likewise the laboratory is interested in every other use for wood, its products or properties; work of research character is carried on constantly with the view of utilizing every last bit of value in the raw material and of eliminating the criminal wastes usual in the manufacture of wood products.

As an example of this may be cited one of the unsolved problems on which experts of the laboratory are now working. Stated tersely in the words of the director: “A ton of dry wood yields only nine hundred pounds of dry sulphite pulp for paper. The rest is lost in the waste sulphite liquor. Can't we do something with that other fifty-five per cent?”

Sooner or later the experts of the laboratory will do something. A means will be found either for increasing the pulp yield immensely or for utilizing the waste with profit in some other direction. In any event, success in this investigation will mean a big drop in the cost of newsprint paper.

Nine years ago the Forest Products Laboratory was established as one of the three branches of research of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. It occupied one rather small building, was assigned an annual appropriation of only a few thousands of government money, and could have been overlooked rather easily amid the important and expensive bureaus of the Department.

On November 11, 1918, its organization had grown to consist of 450 persons. It had spread out to ten separate buildings and was receiving $700,000 a year appropriation for its experimental research work. In magnitude it ranked and now ranks with the greatest industrial research laboratories, whether Federal, private, domestic or foreign. Only Canada, of all other countries, possesses an institution similar in organization and purpose; this, though much smaller, is patterned after the Forest Products Laboratory.

At the start the laboratory began quietly to collect a mass of data on wood and its properties, about which little has been written in any publication. Hundreds of varieties of native woods were studied, and all points concerning which it was possible to imagine a future application were tabulated. This work was of immense importance. If the laboratory did not know the elementary properties of all the materials it is to handle each set of experiments conducted would suffer huge handicaps. In order to build an airplane propeller in the great emergency it would have been necessary to go back and begin with mahogany under the microscope, instead of merely looking to files for accurate data.

Practical Problems Solved

HE reason why little was said of these preliminary experiments was because intense practicality was demanded of the laboratory always, and though the experts know just why a complete file of information on Sitka spruce would be of assistance in building a speed scout airplane no definite problems had presented themselves for hundreds of the varieties of wood studied. With all this out of the way, however, the laboratory is ready to be judged by the most pragmatic tests the public wishes to apply. For several years it has been ready to talk turkey on any subject within the fields of lumbering, timber physics, timber mechanics, wood preservation, products derived from wood, wood pathology, and pulp and paper. Thousands of practical problems have been solved for private business and for the Government, and scores of original improvements in processes have been perfected and donated to the public. In this time of reconstruction the laboratory wishes to be remembered by business men as established to give any information relative to wood, its uses and products that it possesses, free of charge. In addition to this service it offers facilities for the solution of special problems that require experimentation. Where this experimentation is made on a problem having wide application no charge is made. If the work done benefits chiefly the particular business that brings up the problem an apportionment of the cost of experimentation is made, the laboratory standing part and the business firm the rest of the expense. Withal, the arrangements are much more generous than could be secured from any organization working for private gain.

When America found it necessary to build war airplanes the War Department called upon the Forest Products Laboratory for information relative to the strength and desirability of various woods for this work. From more than 300,000 tests made previously upon 130 possible varieties of wood the laboratory immediately furnished a table of strength values at fifteen per cent moisture. With this table went a comprehensive summary of the relation between strength and density in the different woods, the influence of defects, and the laboratory’s recommendations in regard to the relative suitability of Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, Michigan birch and many others. Spruce was shown to be the best material for airplanes.

Immediately a howl of protest rose from certain lobbyists in Washington. One individual had gone to the capital to tell everyone the virtues of Western yellow pine. Another expected to convince the powers that were that birch from Michigan was the ideal airplane wood. It developed, however, that the production of both the yellow pine and the birch was to be shut down by the Government as nonessential, and that the agents at the capital simply were attempting to develop the first government market that offered. Since wood for airplanes was needed they tried to sell the Government yellow pine and birch for that purpose. Needless to state, the report of the Forest Products Laboratory was accepted and used by the Spruce Production Division immediately.

Now that the ban of war secrecy has been lifted partially it is permissible to tell what followed. It was found right away that there was practically no seasoned spruce stock in the United States suitable for airplane manufacture! To air-dry green spruce stock three inches thick, such as is necessary for airplanes, requires one to two years. Obviously this process was far too slow. Owners of lumber kilns all over the country therefore wrote in, recommending this or that process for getting the lumber out in a hurry.

Several of these kiln methods were tried out, and many of them proved sad failures. When baked — as the wood was sometimes treated — it checked, collapsed, honeycombed, exploded or casehardened so badly that it could not have been used for building a picket fence, let alone putting it into struts, wings, ribs, engine bearers and other points of stress on an airplane.

The Forest Products Laboratory recommended a method of water-spray kiln-drying developed by one of its experts. This method gave perfect stock in ten to twenty days’ drying, and because it dried the spruce sticks from the inside outward no honeycombing, casehardening, checking or collapse was present. Kilns were designed for the Army and Navy, and men furnished to operate them until other operators were trained. Thus seasoned stock, equal — and in some respects superior — to the air-dried spruce, was assured in whatever quantity became necessary.

A great amount of slightly defective wood is found in every consignment of spruce lumber. Ordinarily this could not be used for airplane manufacture, but in the war exigency the Government was anxious to utilize every resource. The Forest Products Laboratory therefore prepared a catalogue of spruce-timber defects, showing what lumber should be rejected entirely, what could be used if necessary in lightly stressed parts of the airplane, and recommending strongly that none but the finest stock be used in places that were called upon to bear the shocks and strain of flying. This report, however, nearly doubled what had been considered the available supply of spruce.

Aluminum Waterproofing

HE problem of propeller manufacture also went to the laboratory. At the time the United States declared war British, French and Italian plane makers were still struggling to manufacture a satisfactory propeller. In order to obtain one that would give real service it was known to be necessary to use only mahogany or walnut. Blades made of any other wood rapidly lost or absorbed so much moisture —unevenly— that they lost balance and flew to pieces when whirled by a powerful motor. Even with the expensive propellers made from walnut or mahogany sixty per cent were dead loss either from the cause of lost balance or because humidity conditions affected the glue with which the parts were held together.

After hundreds of quick tests with spar varnishes, so-called "waterproof" paints and shellacs and other liquid coverings the Forest Products Laboratory invented the aluminum-leaf spirit varnish method for proofing propellers against moisture and the resultant evil of lost balance, changed pitch of blades and warping.

The method consisted of smoothing the surface of the propeller until it shone like a mirror: this meant a coat of silex varnish filler, followed by an orange gum shellac coating for open-grain woods. Then came a coat of size, which was allowed to dry slightly before the aluminum leaf was applied. The latter process was done by hand, the leaf being slipped rapidly from a book held in the hand of the operator, and smoothed down by a dab of cotton. After the propeller was covered completely a coat of colored varnish finished the job.

When treated in this manner propellers could be immersed in water or subjected to long stays in a hot arid region without gaining or losing enough of their moisture content to make a particle of difference. Less than one-tenth as much variation could be observed after a month’s trial under the worst conditions as was shown by propellers treated with many coats of the finest procurable varnishes.

Immediately upon securing this process the United States started to make arrangements for manufacturing aluminum-leaf propellers. The end of the war came before many machines in France were using them but it was shown definitely that instead of facing a sixty per-cent loss on propellers the loss need not exceed two or three per cent. It also was discovered that possibly several of the cheaper woods would make just as good propellers as walnut or mahogany if covered with the aluminum leaf. This, with the saving made in spoiled propellers, meant a decided decrease in the cost of each completed airplane.

As it is a matter of great importance we shall mention here that the Forest Products experts, knowing manufacturers would wish a chance to use the process, have dedicated it to the public and have prepared a set of instructions whereby any maker of waterproofed-wood articles can learn, free of charge, the whole method.

In one way most wood is stronger than steel, weight for weight considered. The proof of this statement is easy. Take a bar of steel just strong enough to support one hundred pounds without breaking. Then secure a piece of oak, hickory, spruce, pine or another of the fairly dense wood of the same length and weight. Fasten the wood in such manner that the grain runs in the same direction the pull is applied, and instead of one hundred pounds the wood will be found to be capable of sustaining ten to two hundred per cent more of a load. In this quality lies the chief reason why wood always has been the best airplane-building material.

When weight is applied sidewise to the grain — that is, so the tension tends to pull the grain apart — no such strength is found, however. Right there is the joker in the pack. Wood is very strong in one direction and relatively weak in another. In spite of the most careful airplane designing it is next to impossible to keep some of the parts from bearing double stresses, one of which is exerted against the weak side of the wood. This necessitates great additions in weight for certain parts in order to provide a margin of safety in strength.

Another fault of all wood used in airplane manufacture lies in the fact that across the grain it shrinks badly, while along the grain this phenomenon scarcely is apparent. No treatment yet discovered has been able to eradicate this condition on a plain bar or stick of wood.

These were the reasons for plywood. Plywood simply is ordinary wood of any variety cut thin into veneer sheets, and then glued back together again in such fashion that the grains of the two sheets cross each other at right angles. In actual use the plies may be of any number. Seventeen plies to an inch of thickness has become a standard for certain parts of airplane construction. When multiple ply is used often a light softwood is taken for the ‘‘heart,” and the layers of veneer are built up on this, each additional layer being laid crosswise the preceding. The resultant material has satisfactory strength in all directions. It cannot shrink much in either direction because this tendency in the cross-grain pieces is prohibited by the non-shrinking sheets glued on each side. It has a high resistance to splitting, and it is worked with the greatest ease. Taken with the fact that its strength is equal in all directions — unless the maker of the plywood desires otherwise — it is the finest material yet devised for use in certain parts of airplanes.

A Question of Glue

N preparing standard specifications on plywood for this purpose the laboratory faced another stiff problem. Whatever plywood had been made prior to 1917 had been glued with vegetable or cheap hide glue, neither of which was waterproof. When immersed in water this material simply came apart, the glue dissolving in water and losing all its adhesive properties.

Cloud flying necessitates staying for long periods of time in an atmosphere often approaching one-hundred-per-cent humidity. It is obvious that plywood that tended to disintegrate under moist conditions would be murderous to the aviators who depended upon it. The one answer lay in finding a waterproof glue.

Questioning manufacturers revealed the astonishing fact that only four or five concerns were making glue of any kind that laid claim to waterproof qualities. Samples were secured, however, and tests started. By this time —late in 1917— it had been decided to build the DeHaviland 4 in the United States, and the Signal Corps, alloting a small sum of money to the Forest Products Laboratory, became insistent upon securing a waterproof glue in short order.

Pending the results of further tests the laboratory recommended the use of the best of the submitted samples. This had the immediate effect of skyrocketing the price of this material. The company felt that it had secured a monopoly of the sale of plywood glue, and meant to profit by the situation.

This adhesive was made from the albumen in the blood of animals, and after a short series of experiments the laboratory discovered a means for making a similar glue, fully equal to that being purchased by the Government. As the supply of blood albumen was short, though, prices would be dependent upon a control of the raw material. The laboratory answered this by developing a casein glue which, though not quite equaling the resistant quality of blood albumen, still made a satisfactory substitute. The general situation therefore was relieved, and the price of plywood reduced steadily.

Successful Use of Plywood

HE most severe tests were made on the new glues. Pieces of plywood were boiled for eight hours and then subjected to the “shear test." This consisted in having a powerful machine exert a mounting force until the point of giving was reached somewhere in the plywood. As the force exerted tended to shear one ply from another weak or defective glues invariably gave way. Even when boiled or when soaked in cold water for ten days the new blood or casein glue retained ninety-odd per cent of its original strength; usually the wood itself proved weaker than the glue which held the piece together, and a tearing of the wood fibers would occur while the glue still held. In many cases the plywood panels used on airplanes possessed a shear strength exceeding 600 pounds to the square inch. Plywood made with glue unaffected by moisture became so interesting to experts of the laboratory that they conceived the notion of trying it out as a substitute for linen on the wings of airplanes. This necessitated the development of a new process of gluing, as before it had not been possible to glue together sheets of plywood of one-hundredth of an inch thickness.

The new process consisted in coating tissue paper sheets with blood glue, allowing this to dry, and then applying the thin veneer sheets to each side of the coated tissue with heat and pressure. Though not offering much advantage, weight for weight, over linen the material made in this fashion would not rip when perforated by bullets, and gave more efficiency in lifting power because it did not flap back and forth on the ribs like linen. Whether or not this material will find widespread use in the manufacture of airplane wings still is problematical.

The practical results achieved in developing the plywood made with the new waterproof glues consisted of more than $6,000,000 directly saved to the Government through reduced costs of plywood, and countless numbers of airplane accidents prevented — which last item cannot be measured in money.

For us to-day the work in this field possesses added interest because of the many peacetime uses for plywood — particularly waterproof plywood. Space forbids description of many of these but mention can be made of the fact that door-panel manufacturers are now experimenting with the new material with a view to producing doors that will not warp or crack under varying conditions of humudity. One expert formerly at the laboratory suggested a field for manufacture in which he thought a fortune might be made by some enterprising individual. He professed to believe that the thin plywood, of the type tried out on airplane wings, would make a wall covering of great beauty and durability. He vouches for the fact that this material, which in appearance equals the finest veneer panels, can be made at a cost less than the old-style wood panels or even than the better cloths now used on walls.

Several years ago a well-known American building contractor was viewing the Great Pyramid of Egypt. The guide, calling attention to one wonder after another, pointed out the vast size of the stone blocks of which the pyramid was built. "Each stone you see," he said impressively, “represents the labor of six slaves for three months, hewing and finishing the block. And the labor of many men was necessary to raise the block into position. In all more than 4000 slaves worked on the pyramid daily."

“And how long did it take Cheops’ slaves to complete the whole thing?” asked the contractor, squinting up at the broken apex.

“It is not known exactly, sir. Probably thirty years or more.”

The contractor snorted. “Well,” he replied, “give me plain American bricks and 4000 plain American bricklayers and I'd have done it for you in six months!”

Though his view in no wise detracts fron the wonder of Cheops' tomb the contractor made a distinct point. The vast pile could have been built with a great saving of labor and expense had small bricks been used instead of 400-cubic-foot stone blocks.

The same principle holds good to-day in the main; we may cite some of the work of the Forest Products Laboratory as an example.

Bowling pins, from the inception of the ancient game in this country, have been turned from single wooden blocks. This has seemed necessary, because a pin has a life full of hard knocks; balls hurled at approximately the speed of the cannon balls used by Tilly and Wallenstein against Gustavus Adolphus knock them spinning against the wall, frame in and frame out each evening in the season. A weak pin soon becomes a casualty. Because of the fact that they have to be made from solid perfect blocks they are rather costly. Much Waste occurs in securing the original blocks. The Forest Products Laboratory, mainly because of the new glues it has invented — many of which, as stated previously, are actually stronger than the wood upon which they are used — has perfected laminated bowling pins. These pins, formed of three standardd parts, are glued together so perfectly that they stand every bit of the racket possible to their single-block rivals. They can be made out of much smaller sticks of wood, and waste is cut down forty to fifty per cent. This means a substantial saving for the manufacturer.

Laminated Gunstocks

UCH of the same situation existed at the beginning of the war in respect to walnut stocks for our army rifles. Because these wooden parts had the function of holding the rifle barrel rigid inspite of the continued stress of firing, specifications called for making them from a single piece of fine walnut. The Forest Products experts working under the presence of an alarming scarcity of walnut and all other woods possible for this use made laminated stocks from several pieces. This daring attempt was rewarded by finding the laminated results fully as good in every way as the single-stick product. On the laboratory's recommendation the Government is now trying out these stocks with a possibility thereby of saving a considerable amount on each gun, and protecting our soldiers from a possible future famine in gunstocks.

It would require considerable space to detail all the activities in this direction of the Forest Products Laboratory. Just in passing it might be well, however, to note that so great have been the steps forward in laminated material made by these experts that the were able to develop new built-up I-beams of spruce for use in airplanes. These beams, made in three pieces instead of one, as previously, stood up perfectly under the stresses of flying, and they cost much less.

When this much can be done satisfactorily the laboratory experts feel that they are in a position to be of great assistance to manufacturers of all varieties of wood-turned articles. Many of these, which tradition says must be made of a single piece, no matter what they wastage incurred may amount to, now can be laminated. The laboratory experts stand ready to help all who wish advice in this direction.

The war activity of the Forest Products Laboratory now is practically at an end. This article has attempted to furnish a few hints of the manner in which the organization can and desires to make itself useful and valuable to business and industry in the United States during the next years of reconstruction. Whatever points may be left in doubt will gladly be cleared up for those interested by the director of the laboratory.

title: What We Learned about Wood


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 own welfare, the very soil disappears under his feet. So has it been now through many dreary centuries; and here has been accomplished the warning—that the sins of the fathers are visited, not only upon the children to the third and fourth generation; but upon their remotest descendants, and to their successors, who may be masters of the land.

The desolations of Palestine have been sensibly increased, even within the memory of man;—and unquestionably so within periods that are authentically known to history. Those who have visited Palestine, at intervals of fifteen or twenty years, have forcibly received this impression from the aspect of its surface, as well as from the appearance of the people, that decay is still in progress: a ruthless and rapacious rule, dreading and hating reform, withers the industry—such as it might be—of the people, and makes the land a fit roaming ground for the Bedouin marauder. A ten years of British rule, and a million or two of British capital, might yet make this land "blossom as the rose:" the wilderness and parched land how should they be made glad for such a visitation!

Yet beside the social and political causes of decay, some purely physical influences have been taking effect upon Palestine, as upon all the countries that skirt the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Within the lapse of what is called historic time, Libyan wastes have become far more arid than once they were, and, in consequence, they have acquired a


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274 “I presumed it was an orchid, princess, but I cannot agree with you that it is beautiful. Isn’t it responsible for the rather acrid, pungent odor that is mingled with the perfume of the lilies-of-the-valley?” I countered.

The Russian withdrew her eyes, the crimson lips all at once tightening.

“Ah, then you do not like my orchid? So many,” caressingly, “do not like it at first and then—afterward—they grow to love it.”

I sensed something intangible but none the less sinister in her words.

“Ow-een, you shall show to Aunt Sophie that some of my friends do value my so-wonderful orchid.”

She leaned forward, drew out the strange, fleshy-petaled thing, its thick stem oozing a sticky sap, and put it in Owen’s buttonhole with a proprietary air. The sickly, faintish odor pervaded the limousine.

Owen laughed, but I fancied that his laugh was not a happy one. He glanced at me in a half troubled fashion, and I smiled back broadly to express my confidence in him. After all, poor fellow, it wasn’t his fault if a lovely woman chose to distinguish him before the aunt of the girl he loved. Then I saw his eyes drop and his brow gather as he regarded the blossom—no, I can’t call it that, and I didn’t then, even in my own mind—the—thing—in his buttonhole.

“Thank you for the flower, princess. I must confess that I agree with Miss Delorme,” formally, “that its odor is far from agreeable. I presume you’re accustomed to it, aren’t you? Perhaps for some sentimental reason?”

“It may be an acquired taste, like olives,” I put in.

“My father was very fond of such orchids, Ow-een. He had many house of glass on his estate, full of these—experiment.” The princess spoke a bit carefully, her narrowed eyes shifting from Owen’s face to mine. “I have but few, yet more wonderful than this one. I have the great blood-red orchid that seem so solid, so yielding, at once—like the pulsing flesh of a child’s heart.”

I couldn’t restrain an exclamation of disgust and horror at the simile, and the princess straightened her slim form suddenly and changed her tone, with a gracious smile.

“And the thick white flower as of new-fallen snow,” she purred, “is one of the most lovely. But I see the chère tante is not interest’ in Irma Tchernova’s poor flowers,” plaintively. “Ah, perhaps, some day you will come, then, to see my jewels? You are a woman and must be interest’ in the jewels? I have many that are most fine, of the diamond, the ruby, the sapphire, the emerald,” she ended, leaning toward me engagingly with what I am sure she intended for a friendly smile.

Such was my interior impression of her exactly opposite feeling toward me that I withdrew almost involuntarily from her advances and she observed this with a slight twitch of her crimson lips. The situation might have become further strained, had we not stopped at that moment before the great wall about the Differdale house.

sprang out to ring the bell, and waited with me beside the door, hoping—I felt so, at least—that Portia might appear when the gate swung open, instead of Fu Sing. Sure enough, she did, and put out her hand to him prettily, to thank him for having brought me home.

“Don’t thank me,” he said, motioning to the limousine drawn close to the curb. “The Princess Tchernova—oh, you two have already met, haven’t you?”

“Why, yes, I think we have met,” Portia drawled, her clear eyes upon the glowing garnet eyes of the Russian, who leaned back in the car almost as if she desired to escape notice.


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 higher mean temperature. North Africa is much less abundant in corn, and is less graced with tropical vegetation, than in ancient times it was. In the course of two or three thousand years the sand hurricanes of Libya, and of the Sahara, in sweeping over the valley of the Nile, have not only sepulchred its sepulchres, and entombed its temples and palaces in a ten, or twenty, or thirty feet of deposit—narrowing continually the green bordering of the Nile; but they have given dryness for moisture to the neighbouring countries. Dense forests once shed coolness and humidity over large tracts of northern Arabia. The countless millions of people that were subjected to the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Median despotisms, flourished upon the fatness of the Mesopotamian corn-lands, and by their industry and their water-courses not only preserved the fertility which they created, but rendered the climate itself as temperate as its latitude should make it. Under differing: conditions the same course of physical change has affected Asia Minor—once more populous, in a tenfold proportion, than in modern times these regions have been; for then, population, fertility, mildness of climate, sustained each other.

Those countries of Europe which formed the background of the ancient civilization have, in the course of twenty centuries, been denuded of their forests;—and this is, no doubt, a beneficial change; but this clearance has had great influence in affect-


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 ing the climate and the productions of Greece, of Italy, of France, and of Spain.

As to Palestine, the ruins which now crown almost every one of its hill-tops, and the very significant fact of the remains of spacious theatres in districts where now human habitations are scarcely seen, afford incontestable evidence of the existence of a dense population in times that are not more remote than the Christian era. Galilee, at that time, and Decapolis, and the rich pasture-lands beyond Jordan, the Hauran, and Gerash, and Bosrah, as well as all the towns of the coast, teemed then with the millions of a population which mainly, if not entirely, was fed from the home soil. At the time of the return of the people from Babylon, and for the three centuries following, every acre supported its complement of souls; and the country, according to its quality, returned a full recompence to the husbandman, in every species proper to the latitude:—abundant it was in its dates, its olives, its vines, and its figs; in its cereals, its herds, with their milk and butter; and, not of least account, its honey. These are facts of which the evidence meets us on every page of ancient literature where this garden-land is named.

It is most of all in the hill-country of Judea, throughout which the bare limestone basement of the land now frowns upon the sky, that the negligence of the people and the misrule of their masters have wrought the greatest mischief. Throughout


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 that region which, by its elevation as well as by its latitude, should be temperate, there was a luxuriant growth on all sides in those times when the Hebrew Poetry breathed its first notes. In that age every slope was carefully terraced, and the viscid soil was husbanded:—every swell of the land gave delight to the eye in the weeks of spring, and of an early summer, in which it was laden with a double harvest. By the multitude of its springs, and the abundance of its rains—well conserved in tanks (such as the Pools of Solomon)—drought was seldom known, or was mitigated when it occurred; and a mantle of opulence clothed the country where now a stern desolation triumphs.

Still to be traced are the vestiges of the ancient wealth, the margin of the Dead Sea only excepted. Throughout Judea human industry reaped its reward; and in the south—as about Hebron, and in Galilee, and in Samaria, and in the plains of Jericho, and on the flanks of Lebanon, and round about Banias, and throughout the east country—the Hauran and Bashan—the fertility of the soil was as great as in any country known to us. An easy industry was enough to render a sensuous existence as pleasurable as the lot of man allows. In truth, within this circuit there were spots upon which, if only they were secure from the violence of their fellows, men might have ceased to sigh for a lost Paradise. But that Paradise was forfeited, as well as the first, and now a doleful monotony, and a deathlike silence