תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

LYCEUM FOR SELF CULTURE.

Spiritualism still retains its place as the principal topic of discussion. On Sunday last, prior to the debate, Mr. Vincent recited an original poem, entitled "Courting Sarah Nevada." "It was a "Dream of Love," but the object of adoration was the gold in the Comstock lead.

Mr. Lundy opened the discussion with a 30-minute speech, chiefly repeating extracts from a Second Advent tract on Spiritualism in a very ludicrous manner, then attacting the morals of the Spiritualists. He did not attempt to prove that spiritual phenomena is not worthy of scientific investigation.

Dr. White, the President, said that there had been some disorder in the Lyceum during the past few weeks, for which the Chairman was as much to blame as anybody, but he had recently purchased a Cushing's Manual, and would endeavor in the future to obey its rules in governing the assembly:

Mr. Matthews proceeded to show what Spiritualism had done for the emancipation of woman, and gave some sound lessons as to the necessity of a perfect acquaintance before marriage, all of which was good in its way, but was far from the question at issue.

Mr. Knight again reiterated the kind of evidence which must be produced to substantiate the so-called facts of Spiritualism, and again asserted that the facts had not been supported by such evidence, therefore the spiritual delusion is unworthy the attention of scientific men.

Mr. Kemper positively asserted that he had seen the materialized body of his deceased wife, and grasped her arm. Not only did he recognize her, but several of her acquaintances recognized her under conditions which precluded the possibility of deceit. After giving several cases of this kind, he challenged the scientific world to account for the phenomena except by the philosophy of Spiritualism.

Mr. Bailey, a young man, apparently not more than 18, fresh from the classical walls of a Pennsylvania Medical College, asserted that all the phenomena of Spiritualism had been exposed again and again, and gravely told the audience that the Rochester knockings were produced by a shingle-a statement that seemed novel to most of his hearers. He detailed the expose of a medium at a Pennsylvania college, and assured his hearers that the Katie King affair was a humbug, that he could prove by letters, which unfortunately he left in his valise.

Mr. Healy did not prove anything nor deny anything. He insisted that Spiritualism should be judged by the same standard that is applied to any other religion. Some Spiritualists claimed materialization of departed spirits to a limited extent, but does not the Roman Catholic claim that the ministers of his religion can materialize their Lord Jesus Christ a million times all over the globe at the same time, and can repeat the operation daily? Here is materialization on such a large scale that it paralyzes the intellect to think of it, and yet the Roman Catholics have eminent scientists and philosophers in their ranks, and Christendom dare not ask them to give a scientific reason for the faith that is in them. In alluding to the morals of Spiritualists, he thought they might compare favorably with Plymouth pulpit and surroundings, Rev. Glendining, Rev. Fisk, and other small fry that have recently been spewn up from the mountain of corruption that overshadows our social fabric. Mr. Harper could not see how Protestants could deny

the facts of Spiritualism. He admitted that Catholics did not deny them. He asked if the resurrection of Christ was not a clear case of materialization, and went on to show that the Scriptures furnished abundant argument for spiritual phenomena.

it did. He thought the strong points of the Spiritualists Mr. Battersby was sorry that the discussion took the course had scarcely been touched, and related some of his own experience, which proved that if he does not believe in Spiritualism, he must accept what is known as clairvoyance. The day by Mr. French. discussion is to be continued, and will be opened next Sun

THE FREE THOUGHT SOCIETY OF SAN JOSE. FRIEND SLOCUM:-To one who has been deeply interested in the Society of Free Thought at San Jose-in its success treme radical views on the Social Question, so continually -the statement of your correspondent, "V. W," that "expresented during the last year," had nearly killed the Society, provokes a smile of skepticism as to the earnestness of the writer-whether or not it is not one of his jokes he so much delights to perpetrate. Just as though extreme radical views on any question could kill a Society of Free Thought. Free thought flourishes best where all questions are freely advocated and agitated. If the Society at San Jose can be killed in the free discussion of any of the live questions of the day, it is a Society of Free Thought only in name. Those of its members who would be driven away in consequence of the presentation of "radical views,” lack very important qualifications to make any Liberal Society a success. They would limit the lecturer in the presentation of subjects to the narrow range of their own opinions. Such persons would be quite at home in an orthodox church, and I venture the prediction that should they fail to control the speaker in the choice of subjects for discussion before the Free Thought Society they affect to love so much, they would immediately "walk off on their ear" to some less liberal but "respectable" society. To my knowledge the speakers who have drawn the best houses before the Society of Free Thought at San Jose, and who have been the best renumerated, are those who believe in and advocate radical views on the Social Question. I may mention C. Fannie Allyn, Prof. W. H. Chaneyand Miss Jennie Leys as being the most successful as well as the most radical of those who have lectured before this Society. The success of a Society does not always depend upon numbers. It is quality rather than quantity that guarantees success. One true and loyal soul in a community, who dares to "follow wherever the truth shall lead," and to live the truth when found, will accomplish more for true reform, and the elevation of humanity, than all the respectable Societies that hypocrytically flaunt a free and liberal name.

Hoping that your correspondent may be able to report "improvement" in the quality as well as quantity of Society matters, I am yours, A. C. STOWE.

San Francisco, Jan. 13, 1875.

The Weber Polka, for the piano forte, by Leonard Georges, has been published by Sherman & Hyde, 139 Kearny street.

ASTRAL INFLUENCES.

[ocr errors]

REPLY BY W. H. CHANEY TO VOX STELLARUM.”

CREDULITY.

Who are the credulous? It is charged that Spiritualists are peculiarly afflicted in this way. It is claimed that only Perhaps I was wrong in affirming that the enemies of the gullible of our race are Spiritualists at all. And now Astrology first committed the error of considering the stars that Katie King has been played in a private theatre in Philas the causes instead of the indicators of the event. Most adelphia with success, our wise people all exclaim, "I told certainly Ptolemy declares the influence of the stars, and you so." The logic of these wise people, however, had no so does the Bible, for God himself is represented as say-place in the conceptions of Mills or Whately. These genng: "Can'st thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?" tlemen would say that the only inference deducible is that Job xxxviii, 32. Now this would be a very silly question Messrs. Owen, Childs, et al, were in that instance deceived. to ask if "the seven stars" had no influence. But neither But our wise men of the East, and West also, jump to the Ptolemy nor the Bible are very good authority upon some inference that all other spiritualistic phenomena are, by points, for both maintain that the earth is the center of our this deception, proven false also. And yet these people solar system, and since they are in error in this particular, complacently consider themselves qualified exclusively to they may be in the other. But passing by this point, let decide aright in this momentous matter! And these same us consider the real issue, namely: Do the planets exert people who don't think the modern materializations possian influence in making us what we are, (some great natural ble, believe that a couple of antediluvians were translated, philosophers and some great natural fools) or was it the body, boots and all, direct to paradise! And this notwithante-natal influences surrounding conception and gestation? standing that the Talmud says it was'nt so. This is the true issue, and a question of vital importance. couple other antediluvians materialized on a certain mount If the planets are the causes, then no matter how evil the in Christian times. In a word, they don't believe that what ante-natal influences, if the child is only born under a hath been may be again. They believe that the alleged "lucky star," all that evil is cured. Or, on the other hand, spiritual phenomena are electrical, but they cannot produce parents may take the greatest precautions, both may be in a rap by electricity; and, applying the process of exclusion, most excellent conditions, physically, morally, mentally, electricity is excluded by the fact of the presence of intelat the time of conception, and the best of care be taken of ligence in the phenomena. They ascribe the phenomena of the mother during gestation, yet the child may be born under an "unlucky star," the influence of which will utter intelligence to unconscious cerebration, although the exly destroy all the good which they had a right to expect. perience of all mankind is against it, and the fact that the If this be true, humanity should know it, and then good- communications are often foreign to the medium and to all bye to law and certainty; we will revel in chance and glory in the house, and only verified afterwards, which disproves in blind fatility. The person who really accepts this hope- the theory. less philosophy has lost all stimulant to action, for only an idiot would strive for a particular result if either fate or the stars had already determined what that result shall be. Accept for premises the "starry influence," and "inexorable destiny, and the foregoing conclusions are unavoidable. Are they true to Mother Nature? Perhaps so to the standpoint of some minds, but not to mine; and my brother, "Vox Stellarum," does injustice to his intelligence by harboring such a thought. Saturn on the ascendant of his horoscope must make him skeptical, as the same malignant, in opposition to my ascendant and close quartile of Mercury, does me; but I find that by resisting skepticism, instead of harboring it, I am able to accept immortality and deny fatality more than half the time, although I have had a period of three years, during which I was a rank Atheist all the time. "Resist the devil and he will flee from you,' is a beautiful philosophical maxim, if understood in its logical sense, and having tried it myself I can commend it to Brother "Vox."

[ocr errors]

Adopting the doctrine that mundane events are due to mundane causes, but foreshadowed by the heavenly hosts," by virtue of that law of sympathy which pervades the vast universe, we then have everything to encourage us to action. If it rains, and there is nothing to prevent, we will go under the shelter, instead of saying, "If it is to be fate for me to be wet, I shall be wet anyhow, even though I go into the house." Besides, we shall not attempt to excuse our misdeeds on the ground of fatality, but acknowledging our individual accountability, be ready to exclaim with Pope:

"Yet gave me, in this dark estate,

To see the good from ill;
And binding nature fast in Fate,
Left free the human will.”

I may admit that there are a great many silly people who imagine themselves mediums, and who sit by the hour or day and write communications from any quarter to their own injury, and the injury of others. But while our medical fossil, Dr. Gibbons, who, I believe, has never changed his opinion on anything since he was born, was gravely descanting on this evil, he might have alluded to the hysterical convulsions and catalepsy produced by the revivalist, and the physical evils produced by a belief of prospective hot quarters in the five mile level of hell! Indeed I suggested recently to a Methodist divine the advisability of showing up, by means of a magic lantern, some of the winzes of the famed locality, a la Sutro. It really seems a pity that the spiritualistic phenomena cannot be ordered out of existence by people who are continually confounding the impossible with what is merely beyond the limits of their very limited experience.

In conclusion, the millions who now avow a belief in the spiritualistic origin of the phenomena in question, have not done so by aught that Messrs. Owen, Childs, Edwards or Davis, or others, have said or done, or left undone; nor shall they disavow it, though all these, and the world besides, should be deceived in the premises every day. Virginia, Nev., Dec. 26, 1874. E. STEVENSON, M. D. Go and hear Laura Cuppy Smith to-morrow, 911 Market.

THE INFLUENCE OF REVIVALS.

BY THOMAS STARR KING.

I. REVIVAL METHODS ARE RADICALLY VICIOUS.

The speeches and prayers, limited to three minutes, and stopped by a tinkle of the conductor's bell; the reading of notes for the conversion of indicated persons, and the offering of supplication for them as though prayer were a method of sacred sorcery; the asking of young persons if they "know the Lord;" the solicitation of people to publish their most sacred feelings of penitence, or their equally sacred glooms and distrust and skepticism; the flitting about of experts in the system of evangelical pathology. If one can contemplate such methods of dealing with the religious nature, in a season of excitement, without feeling that permanent harm must result to those who conduct the system and those who are the victims of it, he must hold a conception of religion and the religious sensibilities, that needs, I think, to be enlarged and refined. Safety is still the word and motive that is executed with all possible modulations and variations in the whole fantasia of praying, note-reading, and appeal. "Come to Christ;" "Get an interest in Christ;""Fly to the Cross;" "Find the Saviour;" "Delay is dangerous, for death may overtake you to-morrow;"-these are the characteristic calls and warnings of the movement.

This shows its radical vice. Its working force, so far as the instruction and the teachers give it character, is not the glory of the truth, the beauty of holiness, the need of human nature for its health, to begin to serve God and be educated in a spiritual estimate of all nature and all life. The long arm of its lever is selfish fear. Its fulcrum is the death bed. Its aim is the swinging of men from the edge of the grave, over the abyss, into a mechanical heaven.

II. REVIVALS POISON MANHOOD.

[blocks in formation]

A large number of men and women, no doubt, do reject most of this venom. They are sound and noble in spite of their theology. Their spiritual sense is instinctively so delicate and healthy, that the leaven of Satan in the bread of life offered to them, is quietly cast out before it can pass into their moral blood. But the majority take it into their constitution. It becomes their wisdom, their motive, their measure of God's character. And then what can they know of the Infinite Perfectness? Believing that God has appointed a terrible and irreversible final doom, that yawns just beyond this sepulchre, for every man that has misused the opportunities of life; that he will never pity or forgive any spirit he has made, on the most thorough repentance, through eternity, what can they know, under such instruction, of that perfectness of God which is more than the sum of all the holy and lovely qualities of human character on earth.

Make God just as good in eternity as he is in time. Put
religion on its natural basis, and you kill the revivals, you
shrivel the inquiry-meetings.
v.

REVIVALS REPEL FROM RELIGON THE YOUNG LIFE AND THE
BEST INTELLECT OF THE LAND.

Let any man go through the West, and talk with the men who represent the energy and future of the great rising States; let him hear their lamentations over the dreariness and huskiness of theology that is poured from the pulpits, their confessions of the inward rebellion and loathing with which, when they go to church, they listen to its effete traditions, its ghastly philosophy of life, its artificial terrors, its theories of the government of the moral world, so discordant with the simplicity of science, so foreign from the clearest insight which our best literature reveals; let him hear them utter their fears for the effect on society, after two generations more of this dismal parody of a gospel, and ask if some nobler administration of truth cannot be inaugurated soon and widely.

I cannot do anything else than say that this is poison. The religious emotion that goes to the meetings may be pure and hopeful. But when it is met by this kind of instruc- WOMAN'S LOT.-At best, life goes ill with women in the tion, or is stimulated thus to more intense vitality, a bane main. Affectionateness is her strong-weak side, and man is taken into the spiritual blood that I believe almost neu-unremittingly attacks it. She has a haunting apprehension tralizes the good effect of a renunciation of open sins. Just that in some great prevailing love, thrilling her blood and to the extent that this doctrine is absorbed into character, brain, her nerves and heart, lie her safety and peace. But the manhood is injured. The person may not be a gross she never can anticipate it, nor measure its force. It may offender, as before, against the commandments, he may be not come. To many it does not; to others it comes too a frequenter of prayer meetings, and a sincere exhorter to late; whence agonizing repression, or broken flee from the wrath to come, but he is converted to be stunted; tragedies without end, sometimes without name. he is innoculated with a virus that chills and shrivels his humanity; he is turned from a careless and perhaps generous hearted sinner, into a miserable, starveling dwarf of the spiritual order, on the side of the Lord.

III. REVIVALS CORRUPT YOUTH.

Not long ago I read a volume containing twenty-five sermons, recently preached in New York and Brooklyn with reference to the revival, by the most distinguished and cultivated ministers of those cities. Some of the most powerful of the discourses, I read in my library till past midnight. The air at last seemed full of infernal terrors and woes, and I shut the dreadful book.

I said to myself then, in excitement of soul, what.I will say here with seriousness and deliberation, that rather than my child should have the awful theology of the average of that book stamped upon her heart, I should unspeakably prefer that she should grow up an atheist. As an atheist, the best currents of human nature would not be corrupted in her. Believing what that book teaches, and having her whole nature cramped and distorted into its mould, it would not be possible that her spirit could have any religious beauty, cheer or peace.

Nevertheless, woman's original stock of hope, elasticity, and cheerfulness is so greatly in excess of ours that, in the third, fourth and fifth acts of the tragic comedy, hers is the ampler residue. Nature, who allotted her the larger share of suffering, in mercy granted her superior endurance, It is particularly hard that she should be beset in her youth by the hunger of the heart, and persecuted through man As respects her sins, no sin by the hunger of the senses. is so sinless as her fall, and none so inhumanly punished. On him who betrays her through her deepest trust and holiest feeling, the world yet refrains from placing the responsibility. So foul and unjust an act cannot withstand much longer the wave of progress.-Junius Henri Browne.

Mr. John Vincent, familiarly known as the "One-eyed Scissors grinder," who keeps a stand o'nights on the corner of Pine and Kearney streets, besides being a poet and scissors grinder, has also proven himself to be an inventor. He has invented a dry ore concentrator for which he has applied for letters patent, through the Mining and Scientific Press Patent Agency. The machine is very ingenious and appears more than ordinarily effective.-Mining and Scientific Press.

FAUST-A TRAGEDY.

FROM A MANUSCRIPT TRANSLATION BY DON FULANO

THE STUDY.

FAUST AND MEPHISTOPHELES.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS INVISIBLE.

Woe! woe!

Thou hast shivered it:

The universe

With powerful fist
Thou hast severed it;
It falls, it breaks,

A demi-god.
Now hath withered it;
We bear the load
Of fragments over to
Nought, and bewail
Its beauty as lovers do.
Mightiest one

Of all earth's children
Rebuild the undone,
In thy bosom rebuilding.
A new life course,
With senses lightening,
Begin, new verse

The inception brightening.

MEPHISTO. These are my merry ones,
List to their cheery tongues;
Action and pleasures

They praise in wise measures.
Out of dull solitude

Where ugly cares intrude,

Where the blood drones along
And the sense all goes wrong;
In the wide world to play,
They would tice thee away!

Cease, cease to dally with your grief my friend,
Which, like a vulture, eats into your life,
E'en company which must your tastes offend,
Proves you a man still, if with men at strife;

But still I never meant

To thrust you amongst the rubbish,

I'm not myself so very uppish,

Yet if, as was my sole intent,

You'll walk through life in company with me,

How gladly I'll conform myself you'll see,

And your compere to be

I'll on the spot agree;

Nay, should you prefer it,

I'll be your valet or flunky, or servant.

FAUST-Pray what am I for you to do in payment? MEPHISTO.-Oh! put that off a long time if you list! FAUST-NO, no! the devil is an egotist,

And never yet much out of his way went
To serve anolher, simply for God's sake:
Let your conditions plainly be expressed,
For such a servitor 's a dangerous guest.
MEPHISTO.-I'll bind myself your servant here to make,
And at your wink hither and thither go;
When we've been ferried over Styx's lake,
Why you shall do the like for me below.
FAUST-About "below" I need not fash my wits,

When you've knocked this world into little bits,
The other may arise, or not;

From the green world all my delight out flows,
And yon round sun shines down upon my woes.
When this dear life my soul no longer knows,
What happens next I do not care one jot.
About a future I've no care to bear,
Whether on that side we shall love or hate,
Or whether we shall find in that next sphere
An over and an under. I can wait.

MEPHISTO.-In such a temper you can surely venture,-
Come, bind yourself. You will not censure
The arts that I will treat you to anon;
You'll see what no living man has done.
FAUST-Poor devil! what have you to give to me?
Was ever human soul in its high flight

Dragged down by such an old man of the sea?

Yet you have dishes impotent to blight

The might of hunger! You have ruddy gold
Which without rest runs from one's hand untold,

Like quicksilver! A play at which none wins his end!
A maiden who, whilst lying on my breast,
Exchanges loving glances with my friend!
The thirst of honors godlike fierce unrest,
Which, like a meteor, perishes in smoke!
Show me the fruit that rots before one sacks it!
The tree that daily buds to him that plucks it!
MEPHISTO.-E'en this commission doth no fears provoke,
And such small trifles are to me a joke.

Yet, my good friend, the hour's fast growing nigh
When we, at ease, our own fat fish may fry.
FAUST,-If on a bed of idlesse I e'er stretch

My limbs contented, send me to the crows;
If you can ever flatter this poor wretch,
Or gall him to complacency, suppose,
If you can sate woe with enjoyment, then
Dawn the last day for this most wretched man!
That bet I offer!

MEPHISTO.-Done!
FAUST-And done again!

Find me the moment, tempter, if you can,
To which I'll cry "oh stay, thou art so sweet."
Then you may clasp the gyves about my wrists,

Then will I gaily go my fate to meet.
Let the sad death bell toll then, if it lists,
For this poor parting soul-then too you shall
Be free for ever from your ministry;

The clock may stop, the minute hand may fall
Since Time for ever will have done with me.
MEPHISTO.-Bethink it well! be sure we wont forget.
FAUST-No doubt you'll have the best right to remember,
For I've no too rash measure on me set,
Should I continue I'll due service render;
What care I if your flunky or another's?

BOUGHT AND SOLD.

I stood to-night in my foam-white lace,
With pearls in my shining hair,
And I hid my heart with a smiling face,
And the gazers said, "How fair-
How blithe and bright is the maid to-night,
Who stands at the alter there."

And I heard them praise the costly things
That purchased my nuptial vow;
Praise the jewel that clings and stings
And burdens my finger now;

The milk-white pearls that twine in my curls
And hang like a burden on my brow.

Praise as we praise the frozen tree

That the hoar-white frosts begem,

And the cold cuts keen; but we only see

The glittering diadem;

And the leaves beneath, in the cruel wreath, We've never a thought for them.

Bought with a heap of shining gold;

Bring hither a red hot rod,

And brand my forehead, write there "Sold,

And lost to Heaven and to God."

Yet, weak heart, wait! you chose your fate, All jeweled and golden shod.

THE VOICES OF NATURE.

AN EXTRACT FROM "THE REVERY," A POEM BY EDWARD ISAAC DOBSON.

The moanings low of dtstant seas,

That saddened splash along the shore
Against great rocks, all grey and hoar,
The sighing winds within the trees-
Old Ocean's mountain waves sublime,
That chase each other o'er the deep,
And round the World in grandeur sweep,
Alike, defying Death and Time-

The thunder shocks from out the gloom
Of raging storms that tortured groan
Across the Globe from zone to zone→→→
The hidden secrets of the tomb-

The dreary wastes, and deserts vast,
That robe old Africa in white,

The movements of the stars at night, The solemn wonders of the Past

The grey, bleak cliffs and crags that lift From out the sea, and sullen loom Along the shore athrough the gloom, Until the clouds from off them shift

The planets yet unknown above,

The brook that wends through wood and field, The years to come-what food ye yield

For Meditation and for Love!

pecial Notices.

Do not fail to read Dr. Docking's advertisement, on the last page.

For the very best Photographs go to Bradley & Rulofson's Gallery, with an elevator, 429 Montgomery Street, San Francisco.

Subscribers and Advertisers who change their residence without notifying the Business Manager are sxpected to pay the full amount agreed upon.

A purchaser is wanted at this office for a Sherman & Hyde Piano-the best instrument sold for the price-entirely new; also one of the celebrated Standard Organs, manufactured by Peloubet, Pelton & Co., New York. Inquire of A. M. SLOCUM.

Those suffering from that most annoying of the minor miseries of human life-s cold in the head-or from catarrh in any form, should try Dr. Evory's Diamond Catarrh Remedy. Just try it-that's all. Sold at this office, and by all druggists. Send Austin Kent one dollar for his pamphlets on Free Love and Marriage, etc. He has been seventeen years physically helpless, confined to his bed and chair, is poor and needs the money. He sends four or five well-written essays for one dollar. His address is AUSTIN KENT. Stockholm, St. Lawrence Co., N. Y., Box 44.

A Journal of Live
Live Ideas.

SPIRITUALISM, ITS PHENOMENA AND PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL REFORM, WOMAN SUFFRAGE, ETC.

VOL. 1.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1875.

[blocks in formation]

Mrs. Anne B. Richardson, wife of the Hon. Daniel S. Richardson, of Lowell, has been made a trustee of the State Industrial School for Girls, at Lancassar, Mass.

Notwithstanding the fears of many people that trouble will grow out of the efforts to put "God in the Constitution," it is a fact that the late convention in favor of that movement, held in Boston, was very weak, and that the appeals it made to the people have as yet awakened no decided response.

Rev. L. P. Hickok, D. D., LL. D., the author of "The Logic of Reason," admits the necessity of some new mode of reasoning to successfully carry on the contest Christianity is waging against skepticism. The Boston Advertiser says the book is a more open and utter confession of defeat than has yet been made by anybody holding similar views.

Rev. W. S. Bell, a young man of more than ordinary ability, graduated two years ago from the Divinity School at Cambridge, and entered upon the ministry in the Universalist Church, he believing that to be the most liberal; but he has recently severed his fellowship and is now preaching to independent congregations, including Spiritualistic societies.

Dexter A. Hawkins says "illiterate adults in this country produce thirty times as many paupers and ten times as many criminals as the same number of adults, under similar conditions, with such an education as may be obtained in the free common schools. The cost of taking care of our paupers and criminals, though comparatively few in numbers, is as large as the whole cost of a good system of free common schools and the vigorous enforcement of the law to secure to all children the benefits of elementary education.

No. 36.

The American Unitarian Association has just issued Channing's complete works, in one volume of 631 pages, which is to be sold at $1. per copy.

Printing in colors is now done by preparing blocks of coloring material, so cut as to fit into each other, and giving all the colors required at one impression. The process effects a great saving in press work.

Religious newspapers generally are complaining of lack of adequate support. Some of them with a circulation of eight or twelve thousand fail to pay expenses, in consequence of the delinquencies of subscribers. Is this a good sign?

The New York Children's Aid Society found homes for 3400 children during the past year, the majority of them being of American parentage and more than one thousand having both parents living.

A new system of utilizing steam power has been discovered by which a great saving is effected. It has been found that an engine can be worked from the escape pipe of another engine with an increase of power, and so far as experimented upon any practicable number of engines may be so attached.

A hanging railway car, suggested by Mr. Bessemer's steam system, has been tested with success on the northern railway of France. Seated in this car, which hangs on elastic springs, the traveler experiences the sensation of a hammock, free from vibrations and bumping. The movement is described as very gentle.

A London inventor has secured a patent on a new India rubber tire for wagon wheels, which is claimed to be capable of wearing as long as, or longer than an iron tire, and to have the great advantage of perfect noiselessness and absence of injurious jar. The draft of the carriage is said to be reduced by the use of this tire nearly one-third:

A French chemist professes to have discovered the secret of a chemical composition which has the property of giving to glass extraordinary hardness. Immersed in a bath of the new invention the ordinary material acquires such a degree of cohesion that it opposes to shock of hard bodies or action of fire a resistance ten or fifteen times greater than before. A sample of only three milimeters in thickness resisted the weight of 100 grammes falling from the height of five meters. Thrown on the ground with force it rebounded without breaking, and emitted a sound like a leaf of metal. The company will first introduce it in kitchen articles. This seems to be the re-discovery of one of the lost arts.

« הקודםהמשך »