Mechanical Music

1895

The Wail of a Professor Who Declares That Learning Is a Lost Art.

"What for I look blue?" said the professor. "I will tell you. I look blue because my beezness is being — what you call him? — keeked out. No — ah, yes — knocked out by the maker of those stupid mechanique instruments of music. There is no longer any need to learn the piano, for, see, all you do now is bring in the telegraphique wires from the street, and the piano will play itself. Organ — no. Buy some rolls of papaire and put him in the organ and turn the crank, so, and out will come anything you wish from Strauss to Cherubini. Mandolin — no. For some much too clever Yankee has make another something which you shall button to the piano, and there, my faith, you have your mandolin. Zither — no. For there are the zithers now that you play with a steek. Chord of F, press this steek; cord of B, press that steek, and so on. There is no more need to learn anything.

"Mademoiselle say to me, 'Ah, professor, why should I practice any more when Mees So-and-so, who nevaire took the lesson in her life, has an electrique piano which can play everything as well as you do when she press a leedle button?' And I say, 'Why, indeed?' Then madame say to me, 'Ah, professor, I shall geeve up the mandolin, for I can put a leedle thing to the piano and make it play like the mandolin weeth two fingers.' And I say, `Ah, so?' Then monsieur say, 'Professor, I guess I give up the organ and buy one of those windyphones like Billee Sweetzer have, where all you have to do is to move the feet, and the music come out joost as good as you play,' and I say, 'Was that so?'

'And it ees so. The mechanique music have knocked me out. There is no heart any more to learn anything that take time and patience when you can have all the good music that you like by pressing the leedle button and moving the feet. It ees not the music of the soul, to be sure; maybe it ees not the music of the expression; maybe it ees not music at all. Bah! Who cares? All you want is the tune, just like the organ man and piano woman on the street. Arteest be dam. Vive la mechanique! I am going home to invent a violin electrique and an automatique flute that you shall play with your knees." — New York Sun.

Fortunate Twentieth Century Girl

1901

It is indeed a good time for girls to live, and I think they should realize by whose efforts it became the "good time." Do they ever think what women and girls had to contend with before this time dawned upon the world and how much they owe to some of these same women?

Just think of it! The women breadwinners of the United States, by the report of the last census, count away up into the millions, and it is not so very long ago when not only the industrial avenues, but those of education as well, were closed to girls. Think of their lack of opportunity even half a century ago and contrast it with the present. What were the possibilities of education? Unless she happened to be the daughter of a family who believed in advance of the age that a girl had the brain and ability to learn and that education would not spoil her or make less of a woman of her and a family could afford to give her private masters she had to be content with the merest common school education, less even than children get now in the lower grades of the grammar schools, and even that was grudgingly bestowed upon them. — Sallie Joy White in Woman's Home Companion.

Proofs of Prosperity

1916

Mr. Boyce's Talks

If there is any one who is in doubt about the general prosperity of the farmers, let him go to the county or State fairs and have his eyes opened. "Seeing is believing," and at the annual agricultural exhibits being held in all parts of the country there is plenty of proof of prosperity and progress.

Where the hitch-racks used to be, the visitor sees parking places for automobiles, filled with cars and frequently "overflowing." In fact, providing adequate facilities for the parking of autos has become one of the big problems at county and State fairs. As an instance of what the auto is doing for the fair, seven cars filled with representatives of twelve families came in a bunch from the little town of Loretto, Neb., to the State fair at Lincoln, a distance of 125 miles. Probably not half of that number of people would have come by train, yet they felt no hesitancy about making the long trip in the autos. This is only one instance. There is no doubt that in many other cases longer journeys are being made, over good roads which the autos have helped to provide.

Attendance has been large at all the fairs that have been held this month and the others which are to open between now and the middle of October are making preparations for record-breaking crowds. This in itself is a big proof of prosperity, to which may be added the reports from manufacturers and merchants telling of unusually good business in the placing of orders, now that the harvests are over.

More and more each season, stress has been laid on quality at the fairs, and progress in quality is especially noticeable in this year of good prices for all farm products. Not only is it to be seen in the exhibits and in the increased number of the educational features of the fairs but in the amusements, which have been put on a much higher plane. "Barkers" still "bark," but the shows that remain are of better class, as a rule, than the old-time tent entertainments. "Bosco, the Snake Eater" has disappeared, along with the sword swallowers and other freaks that used to contest with each other for the dimes and quarters of amusement seekers. Carnival companies which furnish entertainment at many of the fairs have eliminated most of the old objectionable features. Good bands are engaged, to give the people the kind of music they want. Many of the big fairs hire aviators to make day and night flights for the crowds and some of the fairs this year have put on elaborate historical pageants in which the schools have assisted.

For those who view the fairs with understanding and appreciation, the farm exhibits are, of course, the big features of interest. These tell the story of progress not only in methods of raising crops and stock but in the improvement of life on the farm. A visit to the machinery exhibits is an education for the city dweller who may not have kept in touch with the advances that have been made. Thruout these exhibits he will see how the power of motors is being applied to agriculture, to facilitate work, lighten labor and improve results in hundreds of different ways. He will see 1 horse power gasoline engines, selling as low as $25, for pumping water and running electric light plants, and big tractors that do heavy work, such as pulling gang plows. He will see electrical devices for thrashing, cutting up feed, cutting grass, pumping water and for many other purposes, including the family washing and similar domestic uses. He will see how gasoline engines and electrical plants have brought comforts and conveniences to the farmhouse and made it the equal of any city home — and a better place to live in than the average city home.

Then there is the automobile show, which is a feature of every big fair. These exhibits are larger this year than ever before, and the reports on orders, like those of other manufacturers who are selling to the farmer, are proofs of the prosperity of the country.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 6.

Warm Rain On Demand

1901

Luxurious Quarters Provided For the Horticulturist's Favorites.

Everybody knows more or less about the cultivation of flowers, but few have either the time or money to grow such rarities as the orchid, sometimes called the "rich man's flower" because so far its cultivation has been restricted almost entirely to great private estates. These botanical aristocrats, like the famous black tulip which, according to the novelist Dumas, bloomed once and once only in the seventeenth century town of Haarlem, require luxurious surroundings in order to attain their best development. They require also special arrangements for their care and protection during exhibitions. Every new building devoted to horticulture has been the means of adding something to these arrangements, and the new horticultural hall in Boston naturally represents the latest achievements in this direction.

Temperature, of course, is one of the first things to be taken into consideration. Readers of Dumas will readily remember Van Baerle's famous drying house and the care with which he raised and lowered the windows. The exhibition rooms of the new hall are drying rooms on a larger scale and are so arranged that pressure on a single lever opens all the windows at once, thus filling the rooms at any moment with sunshine and fresh oxygen. But they are an improvement on the seventeenth century tulip fancier's arrangements in that modern science with its fans, heating apparatus and ventilators, has made it possible to keep the atmosphere always exactly regulated.

It is interesting to know also that the watering of plants in the new building is as scientific a process as the regulation of the atmosphere. Each of the exhibition rooms has several hose connections, supplying hot and cold water The temperature of the water may be regulated before it enters the hose and it thus reaches the individual flower at the exact degree of warmth which scientific experience has shown the gardener will produce the best results.

Very Cooling To Think Of

1910

Artificial Ice is Purer and Can Be Sold Cheaper Than Natural Product

No longer are dealers and users of ice compelled to stand sentinel over nature, with all her vagaries, and wait for ice to be frozen for them. Only a few years ago ice was gathered from anywhere and everywhere, and none could guess what sort of refuse contaminated the waters, rivers, canals, ponds and pools where it was gathered.

No longer does the citizen in the midst of a mild winter take alarm at the prospect of no ice or ice at an almost prohibitive price on account of its scarcity. The manufactured ice is purer than that of nature, without flaw or blowhole, free from admixture of snow and therefore more lasting.

Artificial ice is one of the great discoveries of the last few years and has been reduced to such system that it can be sold at a good profit cheaper than that which was formerly sawed out, loaded in vehicles, hauled to railroad or steamer landing and shipped by rail or by sea to the vast and ugly storage houses, where it was taken from masses of sawdust as it was sold.

The Regulation of Clocks

1902

The remarkable pendulum experiment in the Pantheon at Paris to prove the rotation of the earth, strikingly illustrates the majestic uses of the familiar clock-maker's device.

It seems almost impossible of belief, in an age of well-regulated watches, that the clocks of Galileo's time could not be kept going at a uniform speed. Clocks went by means of a dragging weight, but the pendulum had not been thought of as a regulator. It occurred to Galileo to make a clock with the pendulum only, but of course, the work of turning the wheels stopped it. It was left to Haygens, in 1656, 14 years after the great astronomer's death, to combine the pendulum with the dragging weight and thus solve the problem of reckoning astronomical time with exactitude.

The Faster You Can Get There, The Later You Are?

1910, editorial observations

Is the speedy motor car an obstacle to punctuality? It would seem so.

Certainly the habit of arriving late at the theater and other places of entertainment is growing with the multiplication of the means of rapid transportation. It is seldom that a play or program is not marred or interrupted by these late arrivals. And the disturbance is greater where motor cars carry the larger number of the attendants.

Does this mean that those who have to depend on the street cars are more apt to give themselves reasonable time than are those who have gotten into the habit of thinking that neither time nor distance counts when the automobile is available? At any rate the habit is a bad one.

Insects Carry Disease

1917

Our knowledge of the connection of insects with diseases is a very modern acquisition. In his presidential address to the Washington Academy of Sciences, Dr. L. O. Howard noted that standard medical works of a score of years ago made no mention of the subject, but recent literature records 226 different disease germs as known to have been carried by insects to man or animals, 87 organisms as known to be parasitic in insects but not known to be transmitted, and 282 species of insects as discovered causes or carriers of diseases of man or animals.

The transportation by wind of the body-louse, the carrier of typhus fever, is among late discoveries to which many writers have given attention. Tick paralysis is another novel subject, the disease occurring in Australia, Africa and North America, and 13 cases have been reported by a single Oregon physician.

Progressive paralysis of motor but not sensory nerves follows the attachment of the tick. The disease is not infectious, and it has not been decided whether it is due to a specific organism or to nerve shock. Infantile paralysis is believed to be one of the diseases not carried by insects.

No Monopoly of Brains

1905

Hopeful Sign That Proves This the Age of Opportunity

One of the most hopeful signs of the times is the apparent decay of the breed of so-called great men — those mighty personalities that in former times stood out like a solitary tree in a vast prairie.

The reason for it, of course, is the distinction of all those old-time monopolies of brains which stunted all human beings except a few who, by chance rather than by superiority of fibre, grew and developed. There are thousands, literally thousands, of men now living who, if they had lived a century or so ago and had done a work similar to which they are doing without any very sonorous fanfare upon the trumpets of fame, would have been the talk of the world and the main topic of history.

And how many of the so-called great achievements of so-called great statesmen, soldiers and thinkers of former times would be impossible to-day, because those achievements depended chiefly upon the ignorance and incapacity of the overwhelming mass of the men of their day!

Truly, this is the age of opportunity. — Saturday Evening Post.

Telephone in the Woods

1905

"I've been reading," remarked a citizen who spends five months of every year in the woods, "that the telephone is a great convenience in the wilderness. The Electrical Review says that throughout the forests, from St. John to Vancouver, the telephone brings the lumber camps into touch with one another, letters are read to lumbermen snowed in 50 or 300 miles from civilization and the human side of life is made warmer and more vivid by this means of communication.

"A telephone does heat up considerably anywhere, especially when it won't work; but I'm inclined to think a telephone in the wilderness is a great nuisance instead of a great convenience. What an angler, hunter or botanist wants of one of the things is more than I can understand. They've got the Adirondacks fixed so that there's a push button in every other tree, and if you stub your toe a waiter'll pop out of the bushes with a champagne cocktail or a telegram. That's all right, perhaps, but why not stay in the Waldorf?

"A telephone in the woods is a good thing for game, though. We had our cabin wired to a village down at the end of the railroad one summer. Never again for me. I'd be dangling for trout. 'John, John,' would come my wife's voice, resounding through the aisles of pine and hemlock. 'What?' I'd say, mad clean through. 'Your Boston brokers want to talk with you a minute.' Or I'd be almost within range of a deer and that same 'John' would come floating on the air from the shanty. 'What?' I'd have to call back, and the deer'd be in the next county. 'New York's waiting; long distance,' the servant would holler. "Line's held open for you.' The only trout I got that season was a tame one I bought of a man who fattens 'em for market, and the only thing I shot was the ace of spades. I tacked it up the last day and blazed at it for spite. And now," he concluded, "when I go into the woods the central office can't find me with a guide and a brass band." — Providence Journal.

Life-Destroying and Life-Saving

1900

An eminent physician lately called attention to the important part wars have taken in hospital development. He declared that the Crimean War developed the trained nurse and the training-school. In the American Civil War, medical men learned that small hospitals, and even hospital tents, are better than large enclosed structures for the sick and wounded. To the knowledge thus gained is due the pavilion tent.

It was war, also, it is asserted, that led, not to the discovery, but to the introduction, of antiseptic surgery. Medical science will profit by the conflict now in progress in South Africa. Through disease and wounds there treated, benefit will come to the civilized world.

Thus out of a great evil may come a great good; for war compels resort to every expedient to save the lives of one's own soldiers, no less than to destroy the lives of those in the hostile army.

Moreover, the experience gained in the effort to save life is at the service of the world. There is nothing provincial or selfish in genuine surgical or medical skill. Its work and triumphs are for all men. Quackery conceals information which may help the race, except as it disposes of the knowledge for cash; but the surgeons and the physicians of approved attainment and experience feel that their mission is limited only by the bounds of possible service to their kind. In war, in peace, under favorable or perilous conditions, appreciated or criticised, the good physician, the conscientious operator, does his duty, and is discontented only when his service is less complete than his professional ideal. — Youth's Companion.

Advances In Science of Farming

1899

The wonderful advance made in the science of farming during the last few years is one of the best examples of American progressiveness. A little incident recounted by the Ashtabula (Ohio) Sentinel is characteristic.

One evening, a short time ago, a society in Jefferson needed a gallon of cream. The committee called up by telephone the proprietors of a milk farm two miles north of the town, and asked if they could furnish it. The reply was that they could as soon as milking was done. In thirty minutes from the time the call was made the cream was delivered.

The milk had been drawn from the cow, put into a separator, the cream extracted and sent to town by a man on a bicycle.

A few years ago the committee would have had to send a boy in the afternoon, "yesterday's milk" would have had to be skimmed, and if the boy had not treed too many chipmunks on the way, he might have got back in time for the festival.


When It Paid

It was at the village sewing circle, and the unprofitable question of the failure or success of marriage was under discussion. Beulah Blank, a war widow, thrifty to the last degree of New England thriftiness, kept silent until some one said:
"What do you think about it, Beulah?"
"Well, I must say that it depends," said Beulah. "Now when a woman gits married, an' her husband gits drafted into the army, and he gits killed, and she gits a pension of twelve dollars a month as long as she lives, it pays to git married. That's what I think."


Safe Stock

When news came to Boxby that the squire's son "down below" had made a large sum of money in stocks, some of the wiseacres shook their heads.
Not so old lady Sprowlet with whom the young man had always been a prime favorite.
"I don't see what the minister meant, saying he didn't favor Bob's having dealings in the stock market," she said, indignantly, to one of her neighbors. "I can't see why money made in trading cattle, if it's done fair and square, isn't just as good as money made any other way!"

Want To Fly High

1910

Undoubtedly Most Fascinating Form of Air Navigation

London. — The most fascinating form of aviation is undoubtedly the high flight. One watches the machine rise from the ground and climb steadily an invisible stairway, winding round and round in wide spirals. From the size of a monster the vessel diminishes until it looks like an eagle, then a wild duck, then a pigeon, a blackbird, a lark, a bee, a fly, a midge — and so it finally disappears out sight; for men have now flown to over a mile, and it needs a strong glass and a clear atmosphere for a spectator to detect a machine at such stupendous heights.

One waits in amazement asking how the daring aviator will return safely to earth from the clouds. Suddenly the machine darts into sight, and it is seen plunging downward at an alarmingly steep angle. It is the vol plane, or dive, the most sensational of all aerial feats. Having climbed to his maximum, the aviator shuts off his engine and deliberately steers downward by the aid of the elevator.

He plunges through the aerial sea at terrific speed, but not at hundreds of miles an hour as some imaginative writers have put it. As the air resistance underneath the machine increases with the speed and the amount of surface presented to it by the planes, the vessel is automatically led back to its normal gliding angle, and the downward path becomes less steep. In order not to get too far away from his starting point the aviator thereupon makes another spiral at a gentle angle and then starts upon another plunge. Thus by a succession of these maneuvers he comes to a position from which he can make a final glide and reach the ground smoothly and without shock.

The world's record in high flying was broken by Brookins over Atlantic City, when he rose to the height of 6,200 feet. It took him 56 minutes to reach this point, or in other words he had to reach it by traveling over a distance of about 30 miles in a succession of long spirals, for his flight speed can be assumed to have been about 35 miles an hour all through. His descent was made in eight minutes and was composed of several high-speed dives and short spirals. Brookins used a Wright biplane.

The prettiest high flying is done by the monoplane, and at Rheims Latham, when he soared to 5,540 feet, afforded a splendid spectacle. Morane reached a height of 4,107 feet at Bournemouth and also gave a superb display. Captain Dickson is one of the most accomplished men at the vol plane, and he shows masterly skill and judgment. Mr. Drexel is also a very daring air climber, and in his descent from a height of 2,400 feet at Bournemouth he made a steep glide.

Kansas Chickens Meet Motor Trains

1910

TOPEKA, KAN. — In any one of 20 Kansas towns today one may see hundreds of chickens running and flying, with many squawks and cackles and calls, to meet incoming motor trains. At every station along the lines where motor cars are operated the chickens have learned to hike with all their might to the depot whenever they hear the sharp blast of the siren whistle of the motor cars.

Chickens usually run away from steam trains, but they run for the motor cars. The chickens are as regular about meeting these cars as the bus driver and the postmaster. Every old hen, pullet, rooster and cockerel not penned up answers the call of the motor car siren. This whistle sounds more like a fog-horn than a railway whistle, and can be heard long distances. When the siren sounds the chickens take the shortest cut to the station.

What's the reason? Grasshoppers, Just, plain, old, ordinary, tobacco-chewing, green, red, yellow, streaked, striped and spotted grasshoppers. Bunches of 'em, fat and juicy from feeding in Kansas corn and wheat fields.

All the motor cars have pilots, fenders or cowcatchers of a big scoop-like pattern. They are made of heavy steel bars and covered with a wire screening. As the cars go hiking through the country these fenders gather up thousands of grasshoppers. Going the six or seven miles between stations a motor car will often gather a bushel of grasshoppers on the fender.

These are the big T-bone sort of grasshoppers that are found only in the fields. They are the porterhouse and sirloin cuts of the hopper family and they make a very delectable repast for the chickens. The chickens cannot catch very many of them in the fields and gardens, as the hoppers are quick and make long flights.

The grasshoppers are not any more plentiful this year than in former years, but the chickens never had a way of catching them as they have this year, this being the first season of the motor cars on most of the lines. The chickens of the small town, when the whistle sounds, make a quick dive for the depot, ready to pounce on the hundreds of stunned hoppers lying on the fender.

Civilization Flying Merrily Along

1911

Editorial Winks

Siam is to have an aviation week, and so the march of up-to-date civilization goes — or rather flies — merrily on.

The United States Army wants aeroplanes. They will probably be manned by the flying divisions.

Winter may be trying to keep it up until March. It began early and it has been told throughout.

The new census of Berlin and its suburbs shows a population of 3,400,000. It is camping on New York's trail.

Over-study killed a promising youth in Baltimore, but there is no danger of this malady ever becoming an epidemic.

A German has invented a noiseless telephone booth. A noiseless telephone party line would be a greater blessing.

It is necessarily true that the worst is yet to come.

No man becomes a jailbird just for a lark.

Man's Mental Power House

1914

On Proper and Wise Use of Brain Depends Individual's Value to the World

The brain is our mental power house; its electric product is thought, and our sanity is determined by the mental voltage we carry.

So long as we are live wires, so long as we transmit power, radiate love, give out sympathetic warmth, think individually and act collectively, we establish our right to live.

The lazy man, as has been frequently observed, us not only as useless as a dead man (and takes up more room), but he is a clogging drag upon the wheels of progress.

The man or woman blessed with imagination or anticipation possesses a sort of prophetic vision, a kind of instinct, so that they look upon life with prescience, strength of character and courage. This possession is not a gift of chance, but a cultivation that comes with useful activities.

Inspiration is the indicator of well-being in our mental power house — it is a by-product of labor, for without labor it merely becomes a mental dribble, a wasting (without renewing) of mental vitality. Inspiration is therefore the result of laboring, and when properly applied it is followed by achievements of great worth. Allied to labor, it expands its force. Unallied, it is soon exhausted.

Bellows Now Little Used

1914

Once Almost Indispensable Furniture of Every Kitchen Has Been Largely Done Away With

The bellows, in the forms in which once it was familiar in every household, is still used in homes where open fires are maintained, but the giant bellows that in old times was as necessary an adjunct of the blacksmith's shop as the forge itself, is steadily being supplanted by blowers of other sorts.

Now the village blacksmith takes down the big old time bellows, stores it on the beams up under the roof and installs near the fire a compact little rotary blower which is operated by turning a crank, and where electricity is available men now use that for blowing purposes.

In a long established city blacksmith shop located on the downtown waterfront, where once, across the way, the wharves were lined with tall sparred sailing ships, there was in those days one of those big, old time bellows. When the blacksmith wanted to blow the fire he rested one hand and forearm on the end of the long lever and swayed on it gently, while with the other hand, occasionally he patted the fire. But now?

Now from the wharves across the way the sailing ships have disappeared, and from this old waterfront blacksmith's shop the old time bellows has disappeared, too. The anvil is still there, to be sure, and people halt now just as they have always done, to look in and see the sparks fly when the blacksmith and his helper strike on the red hot iron; but now when the blacksmith wants to blow on the fire he doesn't put his arm on a big bellows lever and sway and sway; now he simply reaches up and moves a little switch. That starts a steady blast, which can be regulated to any force that may be required.

Growth of the Telephone in Thirty Years

1906

By John Vaughn

"Hello, Central," was first heard in 1878. Today the exchanges are numbered by the thousand, the telephones by the million. Various industries, unknown thirty years ago, but now sources of employment to many thousands of workers, depend entirely on the telephone for support. Numerous factories making lead sheathing, dynamos, motors, generators, batteries, office equipment, cables, and many other appliances, would have to close down and thus throw their operatives into idleness and misery if the telephone bell should cease to ring. The Bell Companies employ over 87,000 persons and, it may be added, pay them well. Many of these employes have families to maintain; others support their parents, or aid younger brothers and sisters. It is safe to say that 200,000 people look to the telephone for their daily bread. These figures may be supplemented by the number of telephones in use, (5,698,000), by the number of miles of wire (6,043,000), in the Bell lines, and by the number of conversations (4,479,500,000), electrically conveyed in 1905. The network of wire connects more than 33,000 cities, towns, villages and hamlets.

Such tremendous growth as these statistics show would imply not only steadily increasing appreciation of the telephone, but would also suggest improved instruments, more skillful operators, and better service. There would be no flattery in such suggestion. Electrical science has undergone radical reformation since 1876. Telephony has raised the utilization of electricity to the height of a profession. Of course such advances have not been won without cost. Fortunes were spent in experiment and investigation before a dollar came back. Communication by the first telephone was limited to a few thousand feet. Now, conversation can be carried on by persons 1,600 miles apart. Tomorrow long-distance lines will span the continent; and the day after oceanic telephony will be a commonplace of mercantile routine. But science and money had to collaborate for years before they could work the trade of enabling Boston and Omaha to talk together. — From the "Thirtieth Anniversary of a Great Invention," in Scribner.

Inventors At Work — An Idea in Parachutes

1896

An Italian aeronaut named Copazza has invented two balloon attachments, which are said to have fully realized the expectations formed of them. The one is an enormous parachute stretched over a balloon, and the other a folded parachute hanging under the basket.

If the aeronaut finds that his balloon is rising too fast he opens the folded parachute, which immediately acts as a huge air brake and effectually retards progress.

On the other hand, should the air vessel explode through expansion, fire, or any other cause, the top parachute comes into action and a descent may be made without the slightest inconvenience.


A New Telephone

A Russian electrician named Kiltschewsky has perfected a telephone which practically disregards distance. At a recent test between Moscow and Rostoff, 890 miles, talking, singing and instrumental music at one end of the line were distinctly heard by listeners at the other. An experiment is to be made by land wires and Atlantic cables in talking between London and New York.

Electricity in the Home

1901

Many devices are now available for use in the home. They include small hand lamps which light at the touch of a spring; a pocket lamp and battery made flat like a folding camera; ornamental candles with miniature lights at their tip; a tiny lamp attached to the front of a clock, and small lamps for decorative purposes.

A current is introduced in a house to supply power for flat irons, curling irons, coffee mills, ice cream freezers and sewing machines, and heat for chafing dishes and tea kettles. Telephones are replacing speaking tubes in most of the new mansions and also to connect with stables and other outbuildings.

If power from a waterfall or windmill is available the owner of a house can install an electric plant of his own at small cost. In many large country houses the dynamo is run by a gasoline engine. — St. Louis Globe-Democrat.