 Lincoln Day Address by Booker T. Washington This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson An address by Booker T. Washington Principal, Tuskegee Normal & Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama, delivered under the auspices of the Armstrong Association Lincoln Day exercises at the Madison Square Garden Concert Hall, New York, New York, February 12, 1898. Not long ago said an old-colored man in Alabama to me, I has done quit livin' into ashes. I's got my second freedom. That remark meant that this old man by economy, hard work and proper guidance, after twenty years of severe struggle, had freed himself from debt, had paid for fifty acres of land, and built a comfortable house, was a taxpayer, that his two sons had been educated in academic and agricultural branches, and that his daughter had received mental training in connection with sewing and cooking. With a few limitations here was an American Christian home, the results of individual effort in philanthropy. This negro had been given a chance to get upon his feet. That is all which any negro in America asks for. What position in state, letters or commerce the offspring of his family is to occupy must be left to the future and the capacity of the race. That race may have a new birth, a new freedom in habits of thrift, economy and industrial development, I take to be the meaning of this meeting. If this be true, I believe that the second birth, this new baptism of the race into the best methods of agriculture, mechanical and commercial life, and respect for laborer, will bring blessings, not less than those given us by our great emancipator whose birthday we celebrate. Freedom from debt, comfortable homes, profitable employment, intelligence, bring a self-respect and confidence without which no race can get on its feet. During the years of slavery we were shielded from competition. Today, unless we prepare to compete with the outside world, we shall go to the wall as a race. Despite the curse of slavery during those dark and bitter days, God was preparing the way for the solution of the race problem along the line of industrial training. The slave master who wanted a house built or a suit of clothes made went to a Negro carpenter or tailor. Every large slave plantation was, in a limited sense, an industrial school. On these plantations thousands were taught common farming, others carpentry, others brick masonry, others sewing and cooking. Thus at the beginning of our freedom we found ourselves in possession of the common and skilled labor of the South. For twenty years after freedom, except in the case of General Armstrong, our patron saint, whose name we'll go down in history linked with that of the immortal Lincoln, we overlooked what had been taking place on these plantations for more than two centuries. We were educated in the book which was all right, but gradually those who learned to be skilled laborers during slavery disappeared by death. Then it was that we began to realize that we were training no colored youths to take their places. Then it was that another race from foreign lands began to take from us our birthright. This legacy in the form of skilled labor that was purchased by our forefathers at the price of two hundred fifty years of slavery. That we may hold our own in the industrial and business world, we must learn to put brains and skill into the common occupations about our doors, and we must learn to dignify common labor. It is an easy matter to project the mental development of a race beyond its ability to supply the wants thereby increased. In all parts of the country there should be a more vital and practical connection between the Negro's educated brain and his opportunity for earning his daily living. In the present condition of my race, that knowledge of chemistry will mean most which will make forty bushels of corn grow where only twenty bushels have grown. That knowledge of mathematics will be most helpful that will construct a three room cottage to replace the one room cabin. That literature most potent which will make the girl the thorough mistress of modern household economy. The race sees it. The race wants it. You must push the button and we will do the rest. All this is not as an end, but as a means to the higher life. It is beyond our duty to set meats and bounds upon the aspirations and achievements of any race. But it is our duty to see that the foundation is fitly laid. It is a hard thing to put much Christianity into a hungry man. There is one thing in which my race excels yours. When it comes to thinking you can excel us. In feeling we can excel you. I would not have my race change much in this respect. But I would have the man who likes to sing, shout and get happy in church on Sunday, taught to mix in during the week with his religious zeal and fervor, habits of thrift, economy, and with land in a house or two, or three rooms, a little bank account, just as the white man does. Industrial development coupled with religious and mental development will bring a change in the civil and political status of the South. And this, if for no other reason, should enlist the active aid and civility of every patriotic citizen in the North. Those who revere the name of Lincoln should see to it that we do not fail in the reaping of the full fruit of his life in martyrdom. In this matter let us take high ground. A negro that has learned to respect a white man is tenfold greater than a white man who hates a negro. I propose that the negro shall take his place upon the high and undisputed ground of usefulness and generosity, and that he invite the white man to step up and occupy this position with him. From this position I would have the negro forgive the past and adjust himself to the present. From this position I would have him teach that no race can wrong another race without himself being dragged down. So long as my race is submerged in poverty and ignorance, so long as with hooks of steel will we drag down and retard the upward growth of the white man in the South. If the negro's degradation tempts one to steal his ballot, remember that it is the one who commits the theft that is permanently injured. You owe it not less to yourselves than to your white brethren in the South that this load be lifted from their shoulders. Industrial training will help to do it. Strike a common interest in the affairs of life, and prejudice melts away. A few weeks ago a black man of brains and skill in Alabama produced 261 bushels of sweet potatoes on a single acre of land, twice as much as any white man in that community had produced, and every one of the dozen white men who came to see how it was done was ready to take off his hat to this black man. Not a bit of prejudice against those 261 bushels of sweet potatoes. It is along this line that we are to settle this problem, and along this line it is slowly but surely working itself out. But let us not be deceived. It is not settled yet. A recent close investigation teaches me that in the black belt of the South we have not more than touched the edges. Says the great teacher, I will draw all men unto me. How? Not by force, not by law, not by superficial ornamentation. Following in the footsteps of the lowly Nazarene, we will continue with your help to work and wait till by the exercise of the higher virtues by the products of our brains and hands we shall make ourselves so important to the American people that they will accord us all the rights of manhood and citizenship by reason of our intrinsic worth. End of Lincoln Day Address by Booker T. Washington. Madame Yukio Ozaki, a biographical sketch by Mrs. Hugh Fraser. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Madame Yukio Ozaki In the attempt to describe a character, it is wise to begin, if possible, with its distinguishing attribute, the one which will leave its mark on the time after the popularity of definite achievements may have passed away. So I will say, before going any further into the subject of this sketch, that if I were asked to single out the person who, today, most truly apprehends the points of contact and divergence in the thought of East and West, I would name the gentle dark-eyed lady who is the light of an ancient house in the loveliest part of Tokyo, a spot where, as she sits under the great pines of her garden, she can hear the long Pacific rollers breaking on the white beaches of Japan and listen to the wind as it murmurs its haunting songs of other homes in distant lands where she is known and loved. For though, yea, Theodora Ozaki is a daughter of the East in heart and soul and parentage, one to whom all the fine ways and thoughts of it come by nature. She is also a child of the West in training, in culture, in the intellectual justice which enables her to discern the greatnesses and smile indulgently at the littlenesses of both. Her father, Baron Saburo Ozaki, the descendant of a Kyoto samurai family, a member of the House of Peers, and a privy counsellor, was one of the first Japanese who went to England to study its language and institutions. While there he made the acquaintance of Miss Bathia Catherine Morrison and shortly afterwards she became his wife. This lady was the daughter of William Morrison Esquire, a profound scholar and linguist, who would have been more famous had not his attainments, great as they were, been overshadowed by those of his brother, the Reverend Alexander Morrison, whose translations of the works of German philosophers and historians placed much valuable material at the disposal of English readers. William Morrison's name, however, was known and loved in Japan many years before his little granddaughter, yea, the illustrious flower petal, was born, for he was the instructor of most of the Japanese great men who went to England to learn the ways and speech of modern enlightenment. Prince Mori, Marquis Inouye, Baron Suya Matsu, and many others who afterwards rose to eminence were among his pupils. And when Baron Ozaki became his son-in-law, it would have been natural to conclude that Miss Morrison was fairly familiar already with many sides of the complex Japanese character. But the union was not a happy one, and when several years later I made her acquaintance, I thought I could divine the reason. She was a charming and intelligent woman, but she was English to the backbone, and it was impossible for her to appreciate or sympathize with anything that was not British, and Saburo Ozaki was as fundamentally Japanese. Five years after their marriage, they separated by mutual consent. Three little girls of whom yea Theodora was the second remained in England with their mother and received a very thorough English education. Mr. Morrison took great interest in Oye and brought her many books which she devoured greedily, having inherited all his love of literature and learning. I have often heard her say that whatever ability she possesses in that direction is due to her English grandfather. She was just sixteen when Baron Ozaki insisted upon her coming out to live with him in Japan, and she gladly complied with his wishes. On meeting her after a long separation, he was delighted with her charming grace and pleasantly surprised to find that in appearance she was quite a Japanese maiden, small and slender, with dark eyes, pale complexion, and a mass of glossy black hair. A custom to rule as an autocrat over his household, he decreed that henceforth she was to be only Japanese. She was quite willing to please him in this, so far as she could. The pretty, picturesque ways of her new home appealed to her artistic instinct and the traditions and ideals of Japanese life at once claimed her for their own. Her mental inheritance responded to them joyfully, but this was not quite enough for her father. His duty from his point of view was to arrange a suitable marriage for her as soon as possible, but here he met with unexpected difficulty. The example of her parents' estrangement had inspired the girl with something like terror of the married state, and she had grown up with the resolve to run the risk of contracting a like ill-assorted union. In consequence, she found herself an opposition to her father, an impossible situation in a Japanese family, and especially undesirable where there were younger children growing up, as in this case, for Baron Ozaki had married again after his return to his own country. Various other circumstances also combined to make her decide at this time to become independent. Her knowledge of English qualified her for instruction in that language, and her superior education and well-known social position brought her many pupils in a land where teaching is looked upon as the highest of all professions. In this way, many interesting friendships were formed with Japanese girls, one of whom opened for her the doors of that treasure house of story, the ancient lore and romance of Japan. Here the ardent, sensitive mind was in its element. She says, During those early years I loved the heroes and heroines of my country, with passionate and romantic devotion. They were the companions of my solitude, royal and remote, yet near and potential as the white fire of girlhood's idealisms. They peopled my visions with beautiful images, tender and brave and loyal. In those days I was often reproached with being a dreamer, but my dreams were all of fair and noble things. The old stories had taken possession of me. They were a wonder, a joy and exaltation, though I little imagined that I would ever write them down. It was during this period of her life that there came a temporary parting of the ways, and Europe again claimed Oyei for a time. My husband was the British minister in Tokyo, and we proposed to Baron Ozaki's daughter that she should come and live with us, acting as my secretary and companion. She accepted and became not only a dearly loved friend, but an invaluable assistant to me, contributing very materially to the success of my various books on Japan by her profound knowledge of the country and the people. When I returned to Europe, she followed me and remained with us in Italy for about two years. A part of this time she spent in the house of my brother, Marion Crawford, acting as his immanuensis and cataloging his great library with such precision and intelligence that he remarked to me, Miss Ozaki is a very exceptional person. I had not imagined that the work could be so well done. My brother discerned her literary talent and first suggested to her that she should write and publish the stories of old Japan, which she used to tell in the family circle to the delight of old and young. You have the gifts of imagination and of language, he said to her. You really ought to lecture on those stories. You would have a great success. Italy was a revelation to Oyei. Her love of colour and romance was satisfied there, and the never silent music of the south, the gay yet haunting songs of the people, found a ready echo in her sweet voice, her delicate guitar playing. But her heart had always turned faithfully to her English mother, and when I went to live in London she passed some time there, contributing her first stories and articles to the English magazines. Then she returned to Japan, where the famous educator, Mr. Fukuzawa, had offered her a post in his school. Of all her varied experiences, this was the strangest. The slight, shy girl had a class of 200 young men and boys to instruct and keep in order. But from the crowded classroom she returned to the eeriest and loneliest of dwellings. She says, I lived in the upper story of an old Buddhist temple, really enjoying the queerness and out-of-the-worldness of it. Under my windows was a graveyard, where on summer nights I used to look for ghosts, but I had a terrible time with the cold and the drafts and the rats in winter. Sometimes I was awakened at dawn by the sound of gongs and bells and would look out of my window to see a funeral procession marshaled in the courtyard. In her spare time she continued to write and various articles and fairy stories of hers appeared in The Wide World, The Girl's Realm, and The Lady's Realm. At last her health broke down and she gave up her post at the school and devoted herself more closely to literary work, which resulted in 1903 in the publication of the Japanese Fairy Book, a work which has now become a classic. At the same time she belonged to several of the societies, patriotic, educational, and charitable, by which the Japanese ladies so quietly yet so efficiently aid the cause of true progress in their country. Indeed it was in the interest of Japanese womanhood that she first took up her pen, resolved to dispel the hopeless misconceptions which existed in regard to it in western minds. To use her own words, when I was last in England and Europe and found by the questions asked me that very mistaken notions about Japan and especially about its women existed generally, I determined if possible to write so as to dispel these wrong conceptions. Hence my stories of Japanese heroines Eoyagi and Keisa Gozen in the 19th century and Tamae Gozen last year, Ladies' Pictorial. It has been my hope too that the ancient tales and legends retold in English may show to the west some of the good old ideals and sentiments for which the Japanese lived and died. But other than purely studious interests entered into Eoyagi's life. She had many friends in the court in diplomatic circles and they drew her more and more into society where she was always a welcome addition to any gathering. She saw every side of the national existence, imperial, official, scholastic, and was equally intimate with the small but brilliant society. Her single state was a mystery to all except her closest friends. They knew that she had resolved never to marry until she met a man who should fulfill all her ideals. She met him at last. In 1904 she made the acquaintance of Yukio Ozaki, the mayor of Tokyo. Each had long known of the other and various amusing complications had occurred through mistakes of the postman who, owing to identity of name, there was no connection of family. He sometimes got hopelessly confused and delivered the mayor's letters to the young lady and the young lady's correspondence to the mayor. From the moment when the two first met at a big dinner party and laughed together over the postman's mistakes, the result was a foregone conclusion. Mr. Ozaki had already learned all that his friends could tell him about the intellectual attractive girl whose independent resolute spirit had in no way marred her gentle womanliness. She knew him equally well by reputation and to hear of Yukio Ozaki in Japan is to admire and respect him. Many were the parents, both wealthy and noble, who after his first wife's death would gladly have had him for a son-in-law. His irreproachable morals and elevated character earned for him during this period the title Nihon no daichi no omusoko san, the first best bridegroom in all Japan. But he too nursed an ideal and was not to be drawn into new ties until he had found it. Given two such beings, it needed but one kindly touch of fate's wand to bring them together. The result was a marriage happy in its perfect romance and blessed with the deep sympathy of taste and interest which forms the surest foundation for married felicity. I returned to Japan a few weeks before the wedding took place and counted myself fortunate in gaining the friendship of Yukio Ozaki. My first impressions of him could be summed up in a very few words, strength, calmness, and sergeance of heart. The fearless glance of his eyes, the noble carriage of his fine dark head, the quiet voice and direct yet eloquent speech. All this was the fitting index to a character which through many long years of public stress and strain has never let even a passing shadow flit over its crystal sincerity and loyalty. Political corruption, temptations of personal ambition, lords of advancement, popular feeling, the outcries of opponents, and the applause of adherents. All these have assailed him in vain, have fallen like broken arrows from the shield of his spotless integrity. A Japanese writer says of him, Mr. Yukio Ozaki has had a wonderful political career. He is a born orator, the most powerful debater and the ableist writer in Japan, a staunch fighter for the cause of liberty and the interests of the people, one of the political magnates and the potent factor in the introduction of the Meiji civilization, a man who is above every form of political corruption, once the minister for education and now the highly renowned mayor of Tokyo who has never missed a single election for the 25 sessions of the Diet of Japan. Mr. Ozaki is a strenuous and untiring worker. In his character of mayor, no detail is too small for him to go in too patiently. Drainage, street cleaning, water supply, market regulations, everything that can conduce to the health and morals of the city passes under his watchful eyes and Tokyo is governed marvelously well. His scrupulous conscientiousness leads him to take upon himself a thousand minutiae, which another man would hand over to his subordinates. I shall never forget the searching orders that were promulgated to prepare the capital for the return of the troops from Manchuria. Hundreds of thousands of men war-worn and ragged with all their invalids were to be arriving for months together and no one could tell what germs of disease might come with them. So before the first detachment reached Shimbashi, a house-to-house visitation was made. The most thorough cleaning and clearing away of rubbish was insisted upon and the entire foundations of the dwellings as well as the outhouses and gateways were copiously sprinkled with chloride of lime. Tokyo sneezed, Tokyo wept, but Tokyo had no epidemics. Besides all his responsibilities as mayor, a post which he has filled for seven years, Mr. Ozaki has great political duties to occupy his time. He has steadily refused to attach himself to any party in particular and, though he has many supporters in the diet, is an absolutely independent statesman judging all measures from his only standpoints right and wrong and the best interests of the country. This uncompromising attitude has made many enemies for him, but even they admire and respect him, knowing that he is a man who is said to evil, stand now on that side, from this am I. There is another side to his character, the love of all that is beautiful and inspiring. No one who saw the triumphal return of Admiral Togo can forget the splendid scene of that imposing ceremony attended by half a million people and so deftly organized that all could see the hero and the man who welcomed him in the country's name. The welcome came from the nation's heart and found adequate expression in Yukio Ozaki's magnificent address delivered in the voice whose clear tones had ever sounded in the cause of true patriotism. The thrill of deepest feeling was in them that day. An eye who stood near the speaker saw that his hand trembled and his eyes were suffused with emotion as he welcomed the beloved old sailor back in glory to the country he had saved. One more superb pageant, one where Yukio Ozaki and his bride were host and hostess, returned to my memory, the FET given to Prince Arthur of Connaught in 1906. This was the largest social reunion that has ever taken place in the East and most regally was the illustrious visitor entertained. In the beautifully wooded park, a banqueting pavilion had been erected in the purest style of ancient Japanese architecture, severely harmonious in outline and detail. The interior contained, among other decorations, a great collection of rare Japanese flowers, shrubs and dwarf trees, pines and maples hundreds of years old, and, from Hori trunk to newborn feathery branch tip, perfect miniatures of their spreading, towering brethren of the forest. The crowning feature of the day was the daimyo's procession, which defiled before our eyes across the great lawns in the open air. For this, the last survivors of the feudal epic had been brought out and brought in from every part of Japan. Old samurai who had accompanied their imperious masters in many a famous progress and had cut down all and any who had the temerity to cross their path. In joyful arrogance they came to show a degenerate world the martial splendors of their younger days and the sight was enough to overlook the wrongs and dangers of the dead time and only regret that so much color and fire had to be swept away to make room for the nation's new life. For things like these all art lovers are grateful to Yukio Ozaki, but his two or three intimate friends have more exquisite moments to thank him for. Let me take you to my favorite garden, he said one day when I was with him and his wife, the garden of the seven flowers of autumn. The sun was setting as we drove for miles beside the riverbank, leaving the city far behind. We came through leafy lanes to a half hidden gate through which we passed into a dreamland of misty beauty all shadowy and subdued in the late October twilight. Great pale moonflowers swung like scarlet lamps from tree and trellis. Feathery autumn grasses waved their plumes below. The dark velvety paths led to dim monuments on whose gray stones we could feel rather than read the deep cut characters of classic poems. All was imbued with the tender melancholy which brings repose, not pain. And even now, in hours of stress and weariness, my memory returns to the starlit piece that reigns a night in the spirit-haunted garden of the seven flowers of autumn. Things like these mean more to Yukio Ozaki and his wife than all the social and public side of their existence. Both have the proud, delicate reserves of the aristocrat of mind and soul and escape whenever they can from the publicity which has been forced upon them. It required much persuasion to obtain their permission for this sketch to be published. Madame Ozaki's last words on the subject were, One night I may dine at a steak banquet with cabinet ministers and foreign ambassadors or with distinguished visitors like Mr. and Mrs. Taft who recently visited this country. The next will find me with a purely Japanese party at the Maple Club. I assisted the court functions, the imperial wedding receptions. I act as sponsor or go-between at Japanese marriage ceremonies. I see all the ins and outs of Japanese life. I seem to live in the heart of two distinct civilizations, those of the east and the west, but the east is my spirit's fatherland. My mind still turns for companionship to the great ones of the past, the heroines of my country's history. I find no greater pleasure in the old classical drama of the know, with its Buddhist teachings and ideals, its human tragedies of chivalry and of sorrow than in all the sensational and spectacular modern drama. But my greatest happiness is in my home life, in the companionship of my baby daughter, in the few short hours that my husband can snatch from his work to devote to me. If you must write about us, tell people about Yukio. He is so good and great, I have no wish to be mentioned apart from him. Mary Crawford Fraser Note, Mr. Ozaki's collected works have just been published in Japan. They include many essays on public and literary topics, poems, and a translation into Japanese of the life of Lord Beaconsfield. Madam Ozaki's writings include The Shinto Fire Walking, The Hot Water Ordeal, Niko Festival, Singing Insects of Japan, and many articles on travel and folklore, The Japanese Fairy Book, Japanese in Time of War, Japanese Pierresses in Tableau, Stories of Japanese Heroines, Buddha's Crystal in 1908, and Japanese Girls Home Accompanies in 1909. End of Madame Yukio Ozaki, A Biographical Sketch by Mrs. Hugh Fraser. Read by Colleen McMahon. On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake by William James. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit www.vox.org. On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake by William James. When I departed from Harvard for Stanford University last December, almost the last goodbye I got was that of my old Californian friend Bee. I hope they give you a touch of the earthquake while you're there so that you may also become acquainted with that California institution. Accordingly, when lying awake in the morning of April 18 and my little flat on the campus of Stanford I felt the bed begin to waggle. My first consciousness was one of gleeful recognition of the nature of the movement. By Jove, I said to myself, here's Bee's old earthquake after all. And then as I went crescendo and a jolly good one it is too, I said. Sitting up involuntarily and taking a kneeling position I was thrown down on my face as it went shaking the room exactly as a terrier shakes a rat. Then everything that was on anything else slid off to the floor. Overwent bureau and chiffonier with a crash. As the fortissimo was reached, plaster cracked an awful roaring noise seemed to fill the outer air and in an instant always still again saved the soft babble of human voices from far and near that soon began to make itself heard as the inhabitants in costumes, négligés in various degrees, sought the greater safety of the street and yielded to the passionate desire for sympathetic communication. The thing was over as I understand the lick observatory to have declared in forty-eight seconds. To me it felt as if about that length of time, although I've heard others say that it seemed to them longer. In my case, sensation and emotion were so strong that little thought and no reflection or volition were possible in the short time consumed by the phenomenon. The emotion consisted wholly of glee and admiration. Glee at the vividness which such an abstract idea or verbal term as earthquake could put on when translated into sensible reality and verified concretely. An admiration at the way in which the frail little wooden house could hold itself together in spite of such a shaking. I felt no trace whatever of fear. It was pure delight and welcome. To it I almost cried aloud and go it stronger. I ran into my wife's room and found that she, although awakened from sound sleep, had felt no fear either. Of all the persons whom I later interrogated, very few had felt any fear while the shaking lasted, although many had a turn as they realized their narrow escapes from bookcases or bricks from chimney breasts falling on their beds and pillows an instant after they had left them. As soon as I could discern retrospectively certain peculiar ways in which my consciousness had taken in the phenomenon, these ways were quite spontaneous and, so to speak, inevitable and irresistible. First I personified the earthquake as a permanent individual entity. It was the earthquake of my friend Bee's augury, which had been lying low and holding itself back during all the intervening months in order on that lustrous April morning to invade my room and energize the more intensely and triumphantly. It came, moreover, directly to me. It stole in behind my back and once inside the room had me all to itself and could manifest itself convincingly. Animas and intent were never more present in any human action nor did any human activity ever more definitively point back to a living agent as its source and origin. It had, on the point, agreed as to this feature in their experience. It expressed intention. It was vicious. It was bent on destruction. It wanted to show its power, or what not. To me it wanted simply to manifest the full meaning of its name. But what was this it? To some, apparently, a vague demonic power, to me an individualized being, Bee's earthquake, namely. This form it interpreted it as the end of the world and the beginning of the final judgment. This was a lady in a San Francisco hotel who did not think of it as being an earthquake until after she had gotten into the street and someone had explained it to her. She told me that the theological interpretation had kept fear from her mind and made her take to shaking calmly. For science, when the tensions in the earth crust reached the working end, the earthquake is simply the collective name of all the cracks and shakings and disturbances that happen. They are the earthquake. But for me, the earthquake was the cause of the disturbances and the perception of it as a living agent was irresistible. It had an overpowering dramatic convincingness. I realize now, better than ever, how inevitable were men's earlier mythological versions of such catastrophes and how artificial phenomena of our spontaneous perceiving are the later habits in which science educates us. It was simply impossible for untutored men to take earthquakes into their minds as anything but supernatural warnings or retributions. A good instance of the way in which the tremendousness of a catastrophe may banish fear was given me by a Stanford student. He was in the fourth story of Encina Hall, an immense stone dormitory building. In his sleep he recognized what the disturbance was and sprang from the bed but was thrown off his feet in a moment while his books and furniture fell around him. Then, with an awful, sinister, grinding roar, everything gave way and with chimneys, floor beams, walls and all he descended through the three lower stories of the building into the basement. This is my end, this is my death he felt, but all the while no trace of fear. It was too overwhelming for anything but passive surrender to it. Certain heavy chimneys had fallen in carrying the whole center of the building with them. Arrived at the bottom he found himself with rafters and debris around him but not pinned in or crushed. He saw daylight and crept toward it through the obstacles. Then realizing that he was in his nightgown and feeling no pain anywhere his first thought was to get back to his room and find some room in the hall or at the ends of the building. He made his way to one of them and went up the four flights only to find his room no longer extant. Then he noticed pain in his feet which had been injured and came down the stairs with difficulty. When he talked with me ten days later he had been in hospital a week, was very thin and pale and went on crutches and was dressed in borrowed clothing. So much for Stanford where all our experiences seemed to have been nearly all our chimneys went down some of them disintegrating from top to bottom parlor floors were covered with bricks plaster strewed the floors furniture was everywhere upset and dislocated but the wooden dwellings sprang back to their original position and in house after house not a window stuck or a door scraped at top or bottom. Wood architecture was triumphant everyone was excited but the excitement at first at any rate seemed to be almost joyous here at last was a real earthquake after so many years of harmless waggle above all there was an irresistible desire to talk about and exchange experiences most people slept outdoors for several subsequent nights partly to be safer in case of recurrence but also to work off their emotion and get the full unusualness out of the experience. The vocal babble of early waking girls and boys from the gardens of the campus mingling with the birds songs and the exquisite weather was for three or four days delightful sunrise phenomenon now turned to San Francisco 35 miles distant from which an automobile air long brought us the dire news of a city in ruins with fires beginning at various points and the water supply interrupted I was fortunate enough to board the only train of cars a very small one that got up to the city fortunate enough also to escape in the evening by the only train that left it this gave me in my valiant feminine escort some four hours of observation my business is with subjective phenomena exclusively so I will say nothing of the material ruin that greeted us on every hand the daily papers and the weekly journals have done full justice to that topic by midday when we reached the city the pall of smoke was vast and the dynamite detonations had begun but the troops the police and the fireman seemed to have established order dangerous neighborhoods were roped off everywhere and picketed saloons closed vehicles impressed and everyone at work who could work it was indeed a strange sight to see an entire population in the streets busy as ants in an uncovered anthill scurrying to save their eggs and larvae every horse and everything on wheels in the city from hucksters wagons to automobiles was being loaded with what effects could be scraped together from houses which the advancing flames were threatening the sidewalks were covered with well-dressed men and women carrying baskets bundles or dragging trunks to spots of greater temporary safety soon to be dragged farther as the fire kept spreading in the safer quarters every doorstep was covered with the dwellings tenants sitting surrounded with their more indispensable chattels and ready to leave at a minute's notice I think everyone must have fasted on that day for I saw no one eating there was no appearance of general dismay and little of chatter or incoordinated excitement everyone seemed doggedly bent on achieving the job which he had set himself to perform and the faces although so intense and sat in grave were inexpressive of emotion I noticed only three persons overcome two Italian women very poor embracing an aged fellow country woman and all weeping physical fatigue and seriousness were the only interstates that one could read on countenances with lights forbidden in the houses and the streets lighted only by the conflagration it was apprehended that the criminals of San Francisco would hold high carnival on the ensuing night but whether they feared the disciplinary methods of the United States troops who were visible everywhere or whether they were themselves compromised by the immensity of the disaster they lay low and did not manifest either then or subsequently the only very discreditable thing to human nature that occurred was later when hundreds of lazy bummers found that they could keep camping in the parks and make elementary storage batteries of their stomachs even in some cases getting enough of the free rations in their huts are tense to last them well into the summer this charm of homes all along who have been Satan's most serious bait to human nature that was staffed from the outset but confined I believe to petty pilfering cash in hand was the only money and millionaires and their families were no better off in this respect than anyone whoever got a vehicle could have the use of it but the richest often went without and spent the first two nights on rugs on the bare ground with nothing but what their own arms had rescued fortunately those nights in comparatively warm and Californians are accustomed to camping conditions in the summer so suffering from exposure was less great than it would have been elsewhere by the fourth night which was rainy tents and huts had brought most campers under cover I went through the city again eight days later the fire was out and about a quarter of the area stood unconsumed intact skyscrapers dominated the smoking level majestically and superbly they in a few walls that had survived the overthrow thus as the courage of our architects and builders received triumphant vindication the inert elements of the population had mostly got away and those that remained seemed what Mr. H.G. Wells calls efficiency sheds were already going up as temporary starting points of business everyone looked cheerful in spite of the awful discontinuity of past and future with every familiar association of material things dissevered and the discipline and order were practically perfect as these notes of mine must be short I had better turn to my more generalized reflections two things in retrospect strike me especially and are the most emphatic of all my impressions both are resuring as to human nature the first of these was the rapidity of the improvisation of order out of chaos it is clear that just as in every thousand human beings there will be statistically so many artists, so many athletes so many thinkers and so many potentially good soldiers so there will be so many potential organizers in times of emergency in point of fact not only in the great city but in the outlying towns these natural order makers whether amateurs or officials came to the front immediately there seemed to be no possibility which there was not someone there to think of not in some way provided for a good illustration is this Mr. Keith is the great landscape painter of the pacific slope and his pictures which are many are artistically and pecuniarily precious two citizens, lovers of his work early in the day diverted their attention for all other interests their own private ones included and made it their duty to visit every place which they knew to contain a Keith painting they cut them from their frames rolled them up and in this way got all the more important ones into a place of safety when they then sought Mr. Keith to convey the joyous news to him they found him still in his studio which was remote from the fire beginning a new painting having given up his previous work for lost he had resolved to lose no time in making what amends he could for the disaster the completeness of organization of Palo Alto a town of ten thousand inhabitants was almost comical people feared exodus on a great scale of the rowdy elements of San Francisco in point of fact very few refugees came to Palo Alto but with the twenty four hours rations, clothing, hospital quarantine, disinfection washing, police, military quarters in camp and in houses printed information, employment all were provided for under the care of so many volunteer committees much of this readiness was American, much of a Californian but I believe that every country in a similar crisis would have displayed it in a way to astonish the spectators like soldiering it lies always latent in human nature the second thing that struck me was the universal equanimity we soon got letters from the east ringing with anxiety and pathos but I now know fully what I have always believed that the pathetic way of feeling great disasters belongs rather than the point of view of people at a distance than to the immediate victims I heard not a single really pathetic or sentimental word in California expressed by anyone the terms awful, dreadful fell often enough from people's lips but always with this sort of abstract meaning and with a face that seemed to admire the vastness of the catastrophe as much as it bewailed its cuttingness when talk was not directly practical I might almost say that it expressed at any rate in the nine days I was there a tendency more toward nervous excitement than toward grief the hearts concealed private bitterness enough, no doubt but the tongues disdain to dwell on the misfortunes of self when almost anybody one spoke to had suffered equally surely the cutting edge of all our usual misfortunes comes from their character of loneliness we lose our health, our wife or children die, our house burns down or our money is made away with and the world goes on rejoicing leaving us on one side and counting us out from all its business in California everyone to some degree was suffering and one's private miseries were merged in a vast general sum of privation and in the all absorbing practical problem of general recuperation the cheerfulness or at any rate the steadfastness of tone was universal, not a single whine or plaintive word that I hear from the hundred losers whom I spoke to instead of that there was a temper of helpfulness beyond the counting it is easy to glorify this as something characteristically American or especially Californian Californian education has, of course, made the thought of all possible recuperations easy in an exhausted country with no marginal resources the outlook on the future would be much darker but I like to think that what I write of is a normal and universal trait of human nature in our drawing rooms and offices we wonder how people ever go through battles sieges and shipwrecks we quiver and sicken and imagination and think those heroes superhuman physical pain whether suffered alone or in company is always more or less unnerving and intolerable but mental pathos and anguish I fancy are usually effects of distance at the place of action where all are concerned together healthy animal insensibility will take their place at San Francisco the need will continue to be awful and there will doubtless be a crop of nervous wrecks before the weeks and months are over but meanwhile the commonest men simply because they are men will go on singly and collectively showing this admirable fortitude of temper and of some mental effects of the earthquake by William James recording by Winston Tharp original people by Anna Cora Mallet Richie this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org put forth an original book an original play an original achievement in art an original invention of science and what a clamorous welcome echoes throughout Vanity Fair what a grand eloquent praises are trumpeted from the lips of its graceful boof keepers taking their cue from some outside oracle what enthusiasm what powers of appreciation what critical acumen they display but usher into the presence of the good society the presiding genius of that polite mart an original person oh that is quite different an intolerable innovation a social nuisance good society is shocked that the intruder bears so little resemblance to the charming creatures whom she has stamped and molded and curtailed of two and mental proportion she scans the singular individual with questioning and disapproving eyes and of what a number of crimes according to her code she finds him guilty his fervid nature has melted the smooth waxed mask of polished simulation and reveals strongly marked liniments deep lines and uncompromising coloring sought out the stature of his own soul and found it was not just the measure of any other man's he has burst the straight jacket of cramping conventionality that his vigorous faculties might have free play he has walked out of the verdureless even trotted path which myriads of feet are trampling with unprogressive treadmill motion he has rent asunder what auroralee calls the violet bands of social figments he is dared to think for himself to judge for himself to act for himself and not by the arbitrary law some feebler spirit has established convicted of these delinquencies good society brands him with the terrible stigma of eccentric odd and how quickly her handmaiden ridicule points at him her scornful finger greets him with her dread laugh and pursues him with her caustic jest eccentricity is such a fair subject for merriment such an offense to good taste such a parlor monster let us have none of it in these mincing kidglove dancing shoe days they are not at all dull then those stereotyped transcripts of commonplace humanity whom we encounter at every turn of this popular vanity fair they are not at all weary some then those men and women led by the tinkling of customs weather bell those fashion plate patterns of one another in dress those etiquette book copies of each other in manners those living illustrations of propriety who have been taught to move with the same motion speak in the same tone think the same thoughts crowd down their souls into the same narrow actual and shut the door against the contemplation of any high possible then too we must account them very wise in their conclusion that although an act may be good maybe of importance to mankind may be a deed which justice or honor dictates yet if it would look singular if it has not been done by some other of their set before oh shocking it is to be shunned and denounced what pleasant profitable companions they make these repetition people what great actions great benefits and great examples the world may hope from them they have escaped the dreadful imputation of eccentricity is not that the summum bonum of a man or woman's existence shall we venture to remind them that not as a tree not as a leaf not a flower not a blade of grass is fashioned by the divine hand precisely similar to any other not a single human being is created without distinctive features and characteristics and that by the attempt of those servile copyist to conceal or obliterate the wonderful spiritual and physical individuality given to each they tacitly rebuke the infinite diversity of the creator's works shall we also dare to hint to them that as the eccentricities of genius is a common expression it may possibly suggest the inference that where there is most genius there is usually most originality of thought consequently originality or eccentricity of expression, manner and action thus may we not arrive at the potential deduction that original or eccentric people are usually persons endowed with uncommon capacities if not gifted with positive genius for ourselves we have the bad taste to avow the contact with thoroughly original spirits is to us refreshing and enlivening in the highest degree how their presence awakens stirs up a sluggish dead alive coterie how they infuse new ideas, new pulses new vitality into lower duller torpid organizations how they reinvigorate the great social artery by a process which resembles the physical practice patent in other days of injecting buoyant healthy blood into the flaccid veins of the feeble and dying these original minds force us to think starve us into feeling make us ashamed of our own insignificance inspire us to search out the purposes of our being cried excelsior in our ears impel us onward in the path of progress and so we bid them all hail we would not exchange one hour in society of these strong and strengthening natures for a lifetime wasted basking in the meaningless smiles listening to the pretty feelings of the most charming duplicate of the most perfect model good society ever stamped with her superlative praise of un-excentric un-exceptionable end of original people by Anna Cora-Mollett read by Kelly Taylor Reflections of a Stained Glass Master Chapter 20 A Stained Glass Work A textbook for students and workers in glass by Christopher Wall 1905 This is a LibriVox recording A LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Chapter 20 A String of Beads Is there anything more to say? A whole world full, of course for every single thing is a part of all things but I have said most of my say and I could now wish that you were here that you might ask me what else you want A few threads remain that might be gathered up parting words hints that cannot be classified I must string them together like a row of beads big and little mixed we will try to get the big ones more or less in the middle if we can grow everything from seed all seeds that are living and therefore worth growing have the power in them to grow but so many people miss the fact that on the other hand nothing else will grow and that it is useless in art to transplant full grown trees this is the key to great and little miseries great and little mistakes were you sorry to be the lowest step of the ladder be glad for all your hopes of climbing are in that and this applies in all things from conditions of success and methods of getting work up to the highest questions of art and the steps to Parnassus by which I reach the very loftiest of ideals I must not linger over the former of these two things or do more than sum it up in the advice to take anything you can get and to be glad not sorry if it is small and comes to you but slowly simple things and little things and many things are more needed in the arts today than complex things isolated achievements if you have nothing to do for others do some little thing for yourself it is a seed presently it will send out a shoot of your first commission and that will probably lead to two others or to a larger one but pray to be led by small steps and make sure of firm footing as you go for there is such a thing as trying to take a leap on the ladder and leaping off it so much for the seed of success but though I said that nothing will grow but seed it does not of course follow that every seed will grow or if it does that you yourself will reap the exact harvest you expect or even recognize it in its fruited as the growth of what you have sown expect to give much for little to lose sight of the breadcast on the waters not even sure that you will know it again even if you find it after many days you never know and therefore do not count your scalps too carefully or try to number your Israel and Judah neither on the other hand allow your seed to be forced by the hot house of advertising or business pushing or anything which will distract or distort that quiet gaze upon the work by which you love it for its own sake and judge it on its merits all such side lights are misleading since you do not know whether it is intended that this or that shall prosper or both be alike good how many a man one sees earnest and sincere at starting led aside off the track by the false lights of publicity and a first success art is peace do things because you love them if purple is your favorite color put purple in your window if green green if yellow yellow flowers and leaves and buds because you love them glass because you love it it is not that you are to despise either fame or wealth honestly acquired both are good but you must bear in mind that the pursuit of these separately by any other means and perfecting your work is a thing requiring great outlay of time and you cannot afford to withdraw any time from your work in order to acquire them in these days and in our huge cities there are so many avenues open to celebrity through society the press exhibition and so forth that a man once led to spend time on them is in danger of finding half his working life run away with by them before he is aware while even if they are successful the success won by them is a poor thing compared to that which might have been earned by the work which was sacrificed for them it becomes almost a profession in itself to keep one's self notorious to spend large slices out of one's time in the mere putting forward of one's work showing it apart from doing it necessary as this sometimes is is a thing to be done grudgingly still more so should one grudge to be called from one's work here, there and everywhere by the social claims which crowd round the position of a public man there are strenuous things enough for you in the work itself without wasting your strength on these we will speak of them presently but a word first upon originality don't strive to be original no one ever got heaven's gift of invention I must have it and since I don't feel it I must assume it and pretend it follow rather your master patiently and lovingly for a long time give and take echo his habits his Botticelli echoed Filippo lippies but improve upon them add something to them if you can as he also did and pass them on as he also did to the little Filippo making him a truer and sweeter heart than his father out of the well of truth and sweetness with which Botticelli's own heart was brimming do this but at the same time expect with happy patience as a boy longs for his manhood yet does not try to hasten it and does not pretend to forestall it the time when some fresh idea in imagination some fresh method in design some fresh process in craftsmanship will come to you as a reward of patient working and come by accident as all such things do lest you should think at your own and miss the joy of knowing that it is not yours but heaven's and when this comes guard it and mature it carefully do not throw it out too lavishly broadcast with the ostentation of a generous genius having gifts to spare share it with proved and worthy friends when they notice it and ask you about it but in the meanwhile develop and cultivate it as a gardener does a tree and this leads me to the most important point of all namely the value the all-sufficing value of one new step on the road of beauty if such is really granted you consider it enough for your lifetime one such thing in the history of the arts has generally been enough for a century how much more then for a generation for indeed there is only one rule for fine work in art that you should put your whole strength all the powers of mind and body into every touch nothing less will do than that you must face it in drawing from the life try it in its acutus form not from the posed professional model who will sit like a stone try it with children two years old or so the despair of it the exhaustion and then in a flash when you thought you had really done somewhat a still more captivating fascinating gesture which makes all you have done look like lead can you screw your exhaustion up again sacrifice all you have done and face the labor of wrestling with the new idea and if you do you are sick with doubt between the new and the old you ask your friends you probably choose wrong it is clouded from the fatigue of your previous toil but you have gained strength that is the real point of the thing it is not what you have done in this instance but what you have become in doing it next time fresh and strong you will dash the beautiful sudden thought upon the paper and leave it happy to make others happy but only through the pains you took before which are a small price to pay for the joy of the strength you have gained this is the rule of great work puzzle and hesitation and compromise can only occur because you have left some factor of the problem out of count and this should never be your business is to take all into account and to sacrifice everything however fascinating it may be in itself if it does not fit in as a part of a harmonious whole remember in this case when Loth to make such sacrifice the old saying that there's as good fish in the sea as ever came out brace yourself to try for something still better recast your composition if it is defective the defect all comes from strenuousness as you went along it is like getting a bit of your figure out of drawing because your eye only measured some portion of it with one or two portions of the rest and not with the whole figure and attitude every student knows the feeling so in your composition you may get impossible levels impossible relations between the subject and the surrounding canopy perhaps one coming in front of the other at one point and the reverse at another point you drew the thing dreamily you were not alert enough and now you must waste what you had got to love because though it's so pretty it is not fitting but sometimes it will happen that some line of your composition is thus hacked off by no fault of yours by some measurement of a bar by your builder or some change of mind or whim of your client who likes it all but some vital feature as we have said this is not quite a fair demand to be made upon the artist but it will sometimes occur whatever we do pull yourself together and before you stand out about it and refuse to change consider try the modification and try it in such an aroused and angry spirit as shall flame out against the difficulty with force and heat let the whole thing be as fuel of fire and the reward will be given the chief difficulty may become it is more than an even chance that it does become the chief glory and that the composition will be like the newborn phoenix from the ashes of the old and thrice as fair then also strike while the iron is hot and work while you're warm to it when you have done the main figure study and slain its difficulty you feel braced up your mind clear and you see your way to link it in with the surroundings will you let it all get cold because it is towards evening and you are physically tired when another hour would set the whole problem right for next day's work now while you are warm while the beauty of the model you have drawn from is still glowing in you with a thousand suggestions and possibilities you will do in another hour now what would take you days to do when the fire has died down if you ever do it at all it is after a day's work such as this that one feels the true delight of the balm of nature for conquered difficulty brings new insight through the feeling of new power and new beauties are seen because they are felt to be attainable and by virtue of the assurance that one has got distinctly a step nearer to the veil that hides the inner heart of things which is our destined home it is after work like this feeling the stirrings of some real strength within you promising power to deal with nature's secrets by and by that you see as never before the beauty of things the keen eyes that have been so busy turn gratefully to the silver of the sky with the gray quiet trees against it and the watery gleam of sunset like pale gold low down behind the bows for the robin half seen is flitting from place to place choosing his rest and twittering his good night and you think with good hope of your life that is coming and of all your aspirations and your dreams and in the stillness and the coolness and the peace you can dwell with confidence upon the thought of all the unknown that is moving onward towards you as the glow which is fading renews itself day by day in the east bringing the daily task with it you feel that you are able to meet it and that all as well that there are quiet and good things in store and that this constant renewal of the glories of day and night this constant procession of morning and evening as the world rolls around has become almost a special possession to you to which only those who pay the price have entrance and inheritance of your own as a reward of your endeavor and acquired power and leading to some purposed end that will be peace stained glass stained glass stained glass stained glass at night in the lofty church windows the bits glow and glom and talk to one another in their places and the pictured angels and saints look down peopling the empty aisles and companioning the lamp of the sanctuary end of reflections of a stained glass master chapter 20 of stained glass work a textbook for students and workers in glass by Christopher Wall 1905 Read for LibriVox by Sue Anderson The Settlement of the State was begun in 1636 by that famous Puritan preacher Roger Williams whose preaching at Salem had aroused such opposition that he had been banished from the colony to escape his persecutors he left home at night in midwinter and fled alone through the deep snow of the city and fled alone through the deep snow to his Indian friend, Messasoit, with whom he stayed until spring. Then he and five of his Salem flock made their way to Rhode Island and started a settlement which they called Providence. This is now the capital of the state and the largest city in New England except Boston. The sea cuts deeply into Rhode Island and there are good harbors near the falls on the streams near the land of Narragansett Bay. The combination of abundant water power and a convenient situation for sending and receiving goods both by water and by land has resulted in developing a manufacturing community that for its size is unrivaled in the value of its product. The first successful cotton mill in America was started at Pawtucket in 1790. In the same vicinity are now some of the largest cotton mills in the world. Among the leaders in the revolution, the general who next to Washington did his country the greatest service was Nathaniel Green. He was born in 1742 at Warwick, 10 miles south of Providence. 20 miles farther down the shore of the bay at North Kingston was born in 1756 Gilbert Stewart, one of the greatest of American painters whose portraits of Washington and other distinguished Americans could hardly be surpassed in life-lightness and charm of color. South Kingston was the birthplace of Oliver Hazard Perry, commander of our fleet in the famous Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. Among Rhode Island's important summer resorts are Newport, Narragansett Pier, Watch Hill and Block Island. The first is the most famous fashionable resort in America. It is on an island in Narragansett Bay. The Indian name for the island was Aquidneck, which means the Isle of Peace. It is about 15 miles long, but for the most part very narrow. The early settlers called it Rhode Island, probably because it was in a bay that furnished good anchorages. The word road, or road as it is more correctly spelled, is used by sailors to designate just such an anchoring place. Aquidneck's first settlers came in 1636 as a result of a violent theological dispute in Boston caused by the teachings of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson. Newport first won fame as a slave port, the greatest in America. For a long time its ships carried 1,800 hogsheads of rum annually to Africa to be exchanged by Negroes, gold dust, and ivory. Slaves were owned for domestic servants by every well-to-do family in the town. At the beginning of the revolution Newport was commercially more important than New York. The British occupied it for three years and left it only a shadow of its former self. Nor did it recover until the middle of the next century when a wave of fashion swept into the old place. Its ever salubrious climate without extremes of heat or cold the year through, wide ocean prospects from its cliffs, extensive bathing beaches and a delightful historic afterglow. In one of the city parks is the famous Old Stone Mill which was probably a windmill erected by an early governor about 1675 but which some claim was built by the Norsemen hundreds of years before Columbus discovered America. Longfellow in his well-known poem the Skeleton in Armor makes it the home of a bold Norse sailor and his bride. When the lady died the husband buried her under the stone tower and killed himself by falling on his spear. A little beyond the north end of a quidnep on a mainland peninsula is Mount Hope, the dwelling place of that most famous of New England Indians, King Philip. His village was at the foot of a rude crack where there was a good spring and where it was sheltered from the rough northwest winds. He began his war against the whites in 1675 and many and exposed English village was wiped out and hundreds of settlers lives were sacrificed. Late that year the greatest battle of the war was fought in the southern part of Rhode Island not far from Kingston where nearly 2000 Indians including women and children had taken refuge on a palisaded piece of rising ground in the middle of a hideous swamp. There they were assailed by 1,100 whites and 150 friendly Indians in a snowstorm on December 19th. The stronghold was destroyed, many of the savages were killed or perished in the flames and the rest were fugitives in the winter woods. The next summer while Philip and a few followers was encamped near Mount Hope the white surprised and slew him and the spot where he fell has been marked by a stone. 12 miles off the coast is that popular resort Block Island about 8 miles long and 3 wide. It gets its name from Adrian Block a Dutch navigator who visited it in 1614 when the first English families settled on the island There were about 400 Indian inhabitants. The island has one great pond and 99 small ones. The largest stream is only a rivulet. A curious tradition of the island is that of the dancing mortar. This mortar was a section of a tree 14 inches long and 10 in diameter and hollowed out at one end so that corn could be pounded into meal with a stone pestle. After the original mortar died, the mortar won fame by dancing around the room. It would throw itself on its side and roll to and fro then ride itself and hop up from the floor several times in succession and perform various other strange antics. The first Block Island hotel was opened in 1842 but not until 30 years later did the island develop into the popular summering place it has now The highest point in Rhode Island is Durfee Hill, which rises 805 feet above the sea level on the northwestern border of the state. The people are popularly called gun flints. A name applied because of the common use of gun flint muskets taken from Garrett's in the Dora Rebellion of 1842. End of What to See in America, Rhode Island by Clifton Johnson Read by Betty B The Salt Mines of Wieliczka 1850 by Byard Taylor from The World's Story a history of the world in story, song and art edited by Eva March Tappan Volume 6 Russia, Austria-Hungary The Balkan States and Turkey This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Read by Piotr Natter In company with a professor from St. Petersburg, we left Krakow in the morning, crossed the Vistula and drove eastward through a low, undulating country covered with fields of rye, oats and potatoes. The village of Wieliczka occupies a charming situation on the northern slope of a long, wood-crowned hill. The large storehouses for the salt, the governmental houses and the residences of the superintendents on a slight eminence near the foot first strike the eye. After procuring a pyramid from the proper official we presented ourselves at the office over the mouth of the mine in company with five Prussian travelers two of them ladies and a wandering German mechanic who had trumped out from Krakow in hope of seeing the place. We were all enveloped in long, coarse blouses of white linen and broken a supply of Bengal lights a door was opened and we commenced descending into the bowels of the earth by an easy staircase in a square shaft. Six boys carrying flaming lamps were distributed among our party and one of the superintendents assumed the office of conductor. After descending 210 feet we saw the first veins of rock salt in a bed of clay and crumbled sandstone. 30 feet more and we were in a world of salt. Level galleries branched off from the foot of the staircase overhead ceiling of solid salt, underfoot a floor of salt and on either side dark grey walls of salt sparkling here and there with minute crystals lights glimmered ahead and on turning a corner we came upon a gank of workmen some hacking away at the solid floor others trumbling wheelbarrows full of the precious cubes. Here was the Chapel of Saint Anthony, the oldest in the mines, a Byzantine excavation supported by columns with altar crucifix and life-size statues of saints apparently in black marble but all as sold as Lot's wife as I discovered by putting my tongue to the nose of John the Baptist. The humid air of this upper story of the mine had damaged some of the saints. Francis especially is running away like a dip candle and all of his head is gone except his chin. The limbs of Joseph are dropping off as if he had the Norwegian leprosy and Florence has deeper scars than his gradient could have made running up and down his back. A bangle light burnt at the altar brought into sudden life this strange temple which presently vanished into utter darkness as if it had never been. I cannot follow step by step our journey of two hours through the labyrinths wonderful mine. It is a bewildering maze of galleries, ground holes, staircases and vaulted chambers where one soon loses all sense of distance or direction and drifts along blindly in the wake of his conductor. Everything was solid salt except where great peers of hewn logs had been built to support some threatened growth or vast chasm left in quarrying had been bridged across. As we descended into regions the air became more dry and agreeable and the saline wall more pure and brilliant. One hole 108 feet in height resembled a Grecian theater. The traces of blocks taken out in regular layers representing the seats for the spectators. Out of this single hole one million hundred weight of salt had been taken or enough to supply the 40 million inhabitants of Austria for one year. Two obelisks of salt commemorated the visit of Francis I and his empress in another spacious irregular vault through which we passed by means of a wooden bridge resting on peers of the crystalline rock. After we had descended to the bottom of this chamber a boy ran along the bridge above with a burning Bengal light throwing flashes of blue luster on the obelisks on the scarred walls vast arches, the entrances to deeper holes and the far roof threaded with the picks of the workmen. The effect was magical, wonderful, even the old Prussian who had the face of an exchange broker exclaimed as he pointed upward, it is like a sky full of cloud lampkins. Presently we entered another and loftier chamber yawning downwards like the mouth of hell with cavernous tunnels opening out on the farther end. In these tunnels the workmen half naked with porches in their hands, wild cries fireworks and the firing of guns, which here so reverberates in the imprisoned air that one can feel every wave of sound gave a rough representation of the infernal regions for the benefit of the crowned heads who visit the mines. The effect must be indeed diabolical even we, unexceptionable characters as we were, looked truly uncanny in our ghostly garments amid the livid glare of the fireworks. A little farther we struck upon a lake four fathoms deep upon which we embarked in a heavy square boat and entered a gloomy tunnel over the entrance of which was inscribed in salt letters good luck to you. In such a place the motto seemed ironical abandoned hope all ye who enter here would have been more appropriate. Midway in the tunnel the holes at either end were suddenly illuminated and a crash as of a hundred cannon, bellowing through the hollow vaults, sugary air and water in such wise that our boat had not ceased trembling when we landed in the farther hole. Read Tasso. Treman le spaziose attre caverne e l'erceco in quel rumo rimbomba if you want to hear the sound of it. A tablet inscribed hurtily welcome, saluted us in landing. Finally at the depth of 450 feet our journey seized although we were but halfway to the bottom the remainder is a wilderness of shafts, galleries and smaller chambers the extent of which we could only conjecture. We then returned through scores of torturous passages to some walls where a lot of gnomes, naked to the hips were busy with pick, mollet and wedge blocking out and separating the solid pavement. The process is quite primitive adversely differing from that of the ancient Egyptians inquiring granite. The blocks are first marked out on the surface by a series of grooves. One side is then deepened to the required thickness and wedges being inserted under the block it is soon split off. It is then split transversely into pieces of 100 weight each in which form it is ready for sale. Those intended for Russia are rounded on the edges and corners until they acquire the shape of large cocoons for the convenience of transportation into the interior of the country. The number of workmen employed in the mines is 1,500 all of whom belong to the upper crust, that is they live on the outside of the world. They are divided into gangs and relieve each other every 6 hours. Each gang queries out on an average a little more than 1,100 weight of salt in that space of time making the annual yield 1,500,100 weight. The men we saw were fine, muscular, healthy looking fellows and the officer, in answer to my questions, stated that their sanitary condition was quite equal to that of field laborers. Scurvy does not occur among them and the equality of the temperature of the mines, which stands at 54 degrees Fahrenheit all year round, has a favorable effect upon such being disposed to disease of the lungs. He was not aware of any peculiar form of disease induced by the substance in which they work, not withstanding where the air is humid, salt crystals form upon the woodwork. The wood, I may hear remark, never rots and where untouched retains its quality for centuries. The officer explicitly denied the story of men having been born in these mines and having gone through life without ever reaching to the upper world. So there goes another interesting fiction of our youth. It requires a stretch of imagination to conceive the extent of this salt bed. As far as explored, its length is two and a half English miles, its breadth a little over half a mile and its solid depth 690 feet. It commences about 200 feet below the surface and is then uninterrupted to the bottom where it rests on a bed of compact stone, such as forms the peaks of the Carpathian mountains. Below this, there is no probability that it again reappears. The general direction is east and west, dipping rapidly at its western extremity so that it may no doubt be pushed much farther in that direction, not withstanding the immense amount already quarried and it will be better understood when I state that the aggregate length of the shafts and galleries amounts to 420 miles. It is estimated that at the present rate of exploitation, the known supply cannot be exhausted under 300 years. The 3-part treaty on the partition of Poland limits Austria to the production of the present amount, 1,500,000 weight annually of which she is bound to furnish 300,000 weight to Prussia and 800,000 to Russia, leaving 400,000 for herself. This sum yields her a net revenue from the mines of two millions of Florians, one million dollars annually. It is not known how this wonderful deposit more precious than gold itself was originally discovered. We know that it was worked in the 12th century and perhaps much earlier. The popular faith has invented several miracles to account for it, giving the merit to favorite saints. One which is gravely published in the history of Krakow states that the Polish king, who would a princess Elizabeth of Hungary, not the saint of the Wartburg, in the 10th century asked what she would choose as a bridal gift from him, to which she replied something that would most benefit his people. The marriage ceremony was performed in a chapel in one of the salt mines of Transylvania. Soon after being transferred to Krakow, Elizabeth went out to Wieliczka, surveyed the ground and after choosing a spot commanded the people to dig. In the course of a few days they found a salt crystal, which the queen caused to be set in her wedding ring and wore until the day of her death. She must have been a wonderful geologist for those days. The bed actually follows the carpatians, appearing at intervals in small deposits into Transylvania, where there are extensive mines. It is believed also that it stretches northward into Russian Poland. Some years ago the Bank of Warsaw expanded large sums in boring for salt near the Austrian frontier. There was much excitement and speculation for a time, but although the mineral was found, the cost of quarrying it was too great, and the enterprise was dropped. On our return we visited Franz Joseph's Hall, a large salt ballroom with well-executed statues of Vulcan and Neptune. Six large chandeliers, apparently of cut glass, but really of salt, illuminated on festive occasions, and hundreds of dancers perspired themselves into a pretty pickle. When we had reached the upper galleries, we decided to ascend to daylight by means of windlass. The Prussian party went first, and the ladies were not a little alarmed at finding themselves seated in rope slings only supported by a band under the arms. All five swung together in a heap. The ladies screamed and would have loosened themselves, but that moment the chandeliers began to move, and up they went, dangling towards the little star of daylight, two hundred feet above. Under them hung one of the boys to steady the wearing mass, and the little scump amused himself by swinging his lamp, cracking his heels together, and rattling his stick along the sides of the shaft. When our return came, I found in spite of myself that such pastime was not calculated to steady my nerves. The sound of the music was very much like that of snapping ropes, and my brain swam a little at finding my feet dangling over what seemed a bottomless abyss of darkness. The arrival at the top was like a douche of lightning. It was just noon, and the hot, white, blinding day poured full upon us stinging our eyes like needles and almost taking away our breath. We were at once beset with a crowd of beggars and salt vendors. The latter preferred a multitude of small articles, crosses, stars, images, books, cuts, dishes, etc., cut from the native crystal and not distinguishable from glass in appearance. I purchased a salt seller, which has the property of furnishing salt when it is empty, but it seemed to me that I should not need to use it for some days. I felt myself so thoroughly impregnated with salt that I conceived the idea of seasoning my soup by stirring it with my fingers and half expecting that the fresh roast would turn to corned beef in my mouth. End of The Saltmines of Wieliczka, 1850 by Byard Taylor