 Article No. 6, from Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 1, May 1872. Desinfection and Disinfectance, by William E. C. E. There are certain rules to be promulgated respecting the protection of human life from contagion, or from the injurious effects of decomposing organic matters, which may be gleaned from the experience of ages, and which, as yet, have never been laid down with sufficient clearness. A writer in a medical journal, the other day, pointed out from the Odyssey of Homer, the great solicitude of Ulysses for the purification of his house with Sulphur, that the history of purgation could go still farther back, and bring to light many other interesting memorabilia. This, however, hardly comes within the scope of these short papers. Neither, as I said before, would any attempt to explain the cause of disease, for it would only be a repetition of wise things said before. Happily, too, the grim dwellers of the threshold are now watched with eye of links and nerve of steel, and their newer thrusts at poor mankind met or parried. Names like those of Drs. Parks and Sanderson, in this respect, are fast becoming household words. For the purposes of this chapter, however, I cannot forbear from condensing the remarks of Dr. Angus Smith, with respect to disease generally. According to this authority, the classes of disease may be caused, firstly, by gases easily diffused in air, such as carbonic acid, nitrogen, marsh gas, and others. Secondly, by vapours falling in cold air, and taken up in fogs, volatile bodies, in fact, that concentrate in cool temperatures, and not to be classed with gases. Thirdly, by putrid or decomposing substances, that include, with the hurtful gases named under the first head, many organic forms, which, transferred to a suitable soil, are capable of working havoc with life and health. And, fourthly, by those more organized bodies in various stages and ferments, that have a definite existence, and that multiply the diseases to which they are most allied, whenever they meet with suitable fields for propagation, disinfection is practised by fits and starts. With us it has been mainly a summer practice, when our nostrils encounter the smell of offensive matters. Contagion seizes a house, or a town, and for a time the sanitary inspectors, and the awakened people themselves, distribute even the most noxious disinfectants, without system, and with the inevitable result of expending the most money with the least possible good result. The destruction of valuable property, a senseless panic, and a relapse into the indulgence of time-honoured abuses, are the common results of outbreaks of typhus, or typhoid fevers, of smallpox, cholera, or any other of the many diseases by which we are punished for grave derelictions of duty. We cannot neglect with impunity the maintenance of personal and household cleanliness, ventilation, and an abundant supply of pure water. Soak and soda are the simplest expedience at our disposal for cleansing purposes. Experience teaches us that ancient cities, and even modern human dwellings, are admirably suited to act as reservoirs of contagion, and are constantly polluted by the excreta of the healthy as well as of the sick. We have, therefore, been compelled to resort to disinfection. But such has been our shortsightedness in the matter, that the employment of any agent to destroy infection is too often evaded, and has usually been rendered most distasteful and even painful. A nauseous coating has been put upon this very simple pill. A poor woman is sent to the oil-shop for a little chloride of lime. A foul room is thereby rendered unbearable. The place has to be thrown open, disinfection is not attained, and the maximum of discomfort is attended with a minimum of benefit. Some medical men are, I fear, blameable, for not estimating with greater precision the real benefits derived from the use of volatile disinfectants. They are all irritating and of bad odor, and a popular belief has arisen that, unless they are foul and caustic, they can do no good service. A distinguished chemist, Mr. J. A. Wanklin, has very recently shown that the constitution of a poisoned atmosphere cannot be modified even in a small dwelling by an expenditure of material that would be certainly beyond the means of a wealthy person. To diminish the evils of a malign atmosphere he says, ventilate. And while admitting the correctness of this, I shall humbly attempt to show that means may be employed for fixing the poisonous particles floating in a fever chamber without rendering the air of that chamber irrespirable, or without killing a patient by drafts of cold air. Disinfectants are employed as deodorizers, and as contagion destroyers. Such agents as carbolic acid prevent the decomposition of organic matter, and therefore favour a state of atmospheric purity. But carbolic acid is not a deodorizer. It makes, but it does not absorb or destroy, fetid vapours. And it is for this reason that Mr. La Mer and others have recommended the use of carbolic acid in conjunction with sulfate of zinc, salts of iron, chloride of lime, and so on. There is indisputable similarity between the working of putrid germs and of the seeds of the most virulent plagues. Fevers were classed of old as putrid diseases, and anyone who has witnessed the prompt decomposition and the foul emanations of fever-stricken beings, whether human or brute, can readily understand that it was no very India-rubber-like stretch of the imagination that led our forefathers to confound contagion with putrescence. It is, however, necessary to learn that, in practising disinfection, we have to neutralise the products of, or check the decay of healthy matter separated from living plants or animals, and that we have, likewise, to destroy specific elements of contagion, elements which differ in the various maladies that are known to be transmissible from the sick to the healthy. In order to illustrate this, let us take the case of sewage. The excreta of healthy human beings decompose, and the sewer gases belong to the class of irrespirable gases which cannot be absorbed into the system, without producing serious ill effects, and even symptoms, such as characterise a putrid fever, vomiting, faintness followed by prolonged stupor, fetid diarrhea, and even death. The results are apparently undistinguishable from typhus fever. The line of demarcation between a malignant fever produced under such circumstances, and fevers due to a specific virus, has not yet been satisfactorily established. The foregoing symptoms result also from decomposing matters passing into the blood otherwise than by the lungs, and whole hecatombs of slain, through the instrumentality of hospital gangrene, pyemia, puerperal fever, and allied diseases, testify to the great dangers arising from the diffusion of solid or fluid matters in a state of decomposition. In dealing with the excreta of the sick, it is not the volatile elements and simple gases that we have to fear, but the materials that adhere to anything and everything on and around the sick, and if ever we allow them to pass from the sick room, it is quite impossible to control them. If we even let them pass in any quantity, from room to room, or house to house, in atmospheric currents, we cannot trace them until they have victimized fresh subjects susceptible to their pernicious influences. For our purpose it may be accepted as proved that successful disinfection must aim at preventing decomposition in simple putressable matters, or must aim at attacking fever germs as soon as discharged by the patient. It is desirable that a disinfectant should be an antiseptic, namely an agent that arrests chemical change in animal or vegetable matters, and it must be a deodorizer, or capable of fixing the most noxious gases evolved. It has been erroneously believed that sulphurated hydrogen is the principal deleterious gas which disinfectants have to encounter, the worst kind of vermin to ferret out. Professor Wei, however, asserts that the gaseous elements that are usually foul-smelling and hurtful are amaniacal, the best disinfectant to deal with sulphurated hydrogen, such as evolved in the emptying of a foul ash pit, would be salts of iron or chloride of zinc. Salts of iron and copper are antiseptics, and very active deodorizers, and would have been used even more extensively than they have been had they been harmless. But the iron salts stain all they come into contact with, and copper salts are injurious to life. Zinc salts are also inimical in this latter way. A disinfectant to be available in the homes I am endeavouring to depict must necessarily be harmless, and until quite recently it was not easy to find such an agent. The alkaline permanganates have been extolled as disinfectants. They are, in many instances, admirable deodorizers. But the fact that permanganates are sparingly soluble in water renders their employment very difficult, except in dealing with small accumulations of putrid matter. The use is too limited to enable us to rely on them for systematic disinfection. There is one volatile deodorizer and disinfectant that has been recommended very strongly in some cases by Dr. B. W. Richardson and Mr. Spencer Wells, and that is iodine. In some virulent diseases attended with fetid discharges, a little iodine, placed in a box with a little muslin to confine it, is sufficient to render the room tolerable to the attendants upon the sick. For similar purposes, peat, seaweed, wood, or animal charcoal have been recommended, owing to the avidity with which they condense the gases of decomposition within their pores. For some years Professor Gamgee has used charcoal charged with sulfurous acid as an active antiseptic, and he now suggests the use of charcoal mixed with chloride of aluminium, or, as he popularly calls it, chloralum. The sulfurous acid renders air irrespirable. But chloralum, which is delicousent chloride of aluminium, attracts and neutralizes the noxious elements of a poisoned atmosphere. Having attempted to show that disinfection must be an everyday practice in the household, and that disinfectants must necessarily be harmless antiseptic deodorizers, it is not difficult to establish a code of rules of almost universal application. There is a caution that should be given at all times in a household. Servants cannot be expected to understand the use of disinfectants any more than they can be trusted to carry out a system of ventilation. Disinfection and ventilation, therefore, should, to a large extent, be automatic processes, and happily such things are to be found. A fusion of the two processes of disinfection and ventilation has been tried of late in the following manner. The space occupied by a top pane of glass is fitted up with a piece of metal which slants from the bottom upward, and the top is rounded in shape and perforated. Inside this wedge-shaped ventilator are two shelves pierced with holes, the top one being made to carry a box of charcoal, and the bottom one a piece of sponge. By this double contrivance the inventor and patentee Dr. Howard of St. John's, Canada, claims not only to absorb the watery vapor of the incoming air by the sponge, and disinfect any foul air that may seek entrance by means of the charcoal, but also to warm the cold air by the amount of friction it has to undergo in its ingress through the body of a ventilator, which is already somewhat heated by the warmth of the room. If the wind blows too strongly upon the outside mouth of the ventilator, Dr. Howard proposes a sliding valve to work up and down inside the pane occupied by the apparatus. I cannot but regard such a contrivance as a clumsy one. It may be said to stand in the same relationship to either perfect ventilation or perfect disinfection that spurious freemasonry does to what is called the pure craft masonry, or certain letharges to good white lead. There is no necessity either to filter the air of a room in such a manner. There can, however, be a strong case made out why the water-closet pans of a house should be disinfected. And I am able to point out an apparatus which fulfills every requirement for that purpose. It is exhibited in the diagram, both in section and elevation, and is known as Brown's patent self-acting disinfector. The object is to deliver at every upheaval of the handle a certain portion of a fluid disinfectant. Formerly it was exclusively Condi's fluid. Now it is Chloralum. The construction is the essence of simplicity. In a metal, glass or earthenware vessel, holding a gallon of disinfecting fluid, a metal siphon is fixed, and the bottom is coiled and has a small inlet, as shown, by which means the siphon fills itself. When the closet handle is raised, the water rushing down the supply pipe to flush the basin causes a vacuum in the disinfecting siphon, and its contents are blended with the water. By this means a portion of the deodorizing fluid is retained in the trap or basin, where it has no sinecure of work to perform. The siphon refills in a few seconds, and as only a certain quantity is discharged, a pint of disinfecting fluid, costing one shilling, mixed with sufficient water to make up the gallon, will serve about one hundred and forty distinct actions of the closet. The cost of the apparatus is about ten shillings, and it can be fixed in an hour to any patterned water closet, whatever. The vessel containing the fluid is usually fixed upon a bracket in a corner above the seat. This kind of apparatus can be fixed to a tap in the stable or anywhere else, and water containing a percentage of the medicated fluid drawn off into buckets or run off into the pavement drains. They can be obtained at the depot, fifty-eight, the exchange, Sutherk. Such disinfecters are not new, but the above is the simplest. A patent automatic apparatus of a similar kind was introduced some little time ago by Mr. Spencer. It is also worked by the handle of the closet, and fixed on the wall above the seat. But it is too dependent upon a complicated action of wires and cranks. Its cost is, moreover, thirty shillings. Similar contrivances are sold, adaptable, for the earth-closets now in use. Whether it be true or not that the partisans of the earth-closet first drew attention to the disinfection of the excreta, I do not know. But at all events they were not far behind. I have already given an example of these as applied to the earth or ash-closet. As a matter of course, they are chiefly powdered disinfectants. Mr. Banner, in his improved ash-closet, uses a simple carbonaceous powder, chiefly as an absorbing medium. Nothing could be more wearisome than wading through the history of disinfectants, and yet an occasional smile would be sure to light up the way. Who would propose to burn incense to the god of stinks at various times throughout the day in the shape of patent pastels, composed chiefly of charcoal, sulfur, and nitrate of potash? Or who could be brought to look, hindu fashion, on his patrimonial open drain, or sewer, as a river Ganges, and with religious punctuality, set adrift upon the water there a sacred vessel, which would admit a certain portion of such water, and also containing a phosphorette, which would decompose in contact with the water. The gas and flame thus evolved, being understood to neutralize the evaporating poison of Siva, the destroyer. And yet men have paid for leave to rivet such absurdities upon us, and the cry is, still they come. Since the time of Monsieur Le Bras, who in 1849 claimed to discover, and patented, not less than twelve disinfectants, three liquids and nine powders, what have householders not had to endure, apart from the many simpler disinfectants, such as earth, ashes, charcoal, peat, salt, sulfur, gypsum, alum, vinegar, and tar water, etc., suitable for the coarser purposes of a farm? The disinfectants for the house, now in commerce, may be reckoned on the fingers of one hand. I have already given a general indication of the action of each, and will only add that these useful agents have now been brought to such a state of perfection, that the person who chooses to make up his own mixtures, puts himself in the position of an ague patient, who, ignoring the labours of chemistry, prefers the powdered Peruvian bark to the sulfate of quinine, the disinfectant used in a household ought certainly to be a non-poisonous one. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there is not any choice, for the only one of this description is chloralum, now adopted by the Board of Trade. This is the popular name bestowed upon it by its inventor, Professor Gamgee. It contains fifteen hundred grains of hydrated chloride of aluminium to the pint, or about seventy-five grains to the ounce, and is sold in a fluid and solid state. Slightly diluted, the former will disinfect secretions in the utensils of a sick room, and, exposed in a saucer in its concentrated form, I have found it to remove even the smell which is given off by a newly painted room. In its powdered state it may be sprinkled in cellars, larders, dustbins, ash pits, stables, piggeries, poultry-houses, and wherever a smell is continually arising. In the deodorization of sewage, while being pumped over the garden, one gallon of the fluid, or three pounds of the powder, will suffice for one hundred and fifty gallons of sewage. As regards the disinfection of clothing in the laundry, Mrs. Meredith, the patroness of the Discharged Female Prisoners' Age Society, lately wrote to the standard newspaper, as under. The articles taken in for the wash are fairly sprinkled with chloralum powder. They are then packed in sacks, in which they remain for about two hours, when they arrive at the wash-house. They are then unpacked and shaken singly. After this they are put in a large tank, where a great quantity of water flows over and through them. In this way they rest for at least twelve hours. They are then wrung out, and undergo the ordinary process of washing. It is highly satisfactory to add that not the least deterioration of texture or colour results. At the wash-houses referred to by this lady, a great number of women are employed, and nothing but the washing of the sick is carried on. End of Disinfection and Disinfectance by William E. C. C. E. Recording by Bev Stevens May 15, 2019 Chapter 1 Every Man's University A distinct university walks about under each man's hat. The only man who achieves success in the other universities of the world, and in the larger university of life, is the man who has first taken his graduate course and his postgraduate course in the university under his hat. Their observation furnishes a daily change in the curriculum. Books are not the original sources of power, but observation, which may bring to us all wide experience, deep thinking, fine feeling, and the power to act for oneself, is the very dynamo of power. Without observation, literature, and meditation, are shore and sunshine upon unbroken soil. Only those schools and colleges are true schools and colleges, which regard it as the chief business of all their teaching, to persuade those under their charge to say more perfectly what they are looking at, to find what they should have been unable to observe had it not been for their school instruction. You can't make a good arrow from a pig's tail, and you can seldom get a man worthwhile out of one who has gone through the early part of his life without having learned to be alert when things are to be seen or heard. John Stuart Blackie says that it is astonishing how much we all go about with our eyes wide open and see nothing, and Dr Johnson says that some men shall see more while riding 10 miles upon the top of an omnibus than some others shall see in riding over the continent. How to observe should be the motto, not only in the beginning of our life, but throughout our career. With the same intellectual gifts interested in the same ideas, two men walk side by side through the same scenery and meet the same people. One man has had much inspiration from the country traversed, and has been intent upon all that he has seen and heard among the people. The other has caught no inspiration from beauty or bird or blossom, and only the trivialities of the people have amused him. A traveller in Athens or Rome, Paris or London, may be shown these cities by a professional guide, and yet gain only a smattering of what these cities hold in store for him, and remember little of what he has seen. Another traveller, unattended by a guide, but observant of everything that comes to his eyes and ears, will carry away stores from his visit to those cities, which shall be of lifelong interest and be serviceable to all who shall travel his way. The solitary but observant stranger in a country almost always profits most from his travels. He is compelled to notice boulevards and buildings, parks and people, and every day of his travels is a lesson in observation that accustoms him to remember all he has once seen. The newspaper correspondents of other days had no guide books or guides, and they were entire strangers in the places they visited. They relied entirely upon themselves to find their way and to discover everything that was valuable and interesting. They find much that the modern guide either overlooks or disregards and wrote for the papers at home what would most interest and instruct their readers. When Henry M. Stanley first visited Jerusalem, he insisted that the dragoman in charge of his party should keep all guides and guidebooks out of his sight. In two days Stanley knew the streets and the location of the temple and the Holy Sheplica and all the notable places in that old city. If Stanley is today known as one of the most intelligent of travellers, it is mainly because he excelled in daily observation, which everyone who thinks for himself recognises as the supreme acquisition of a liberal education. He often said that he knew Rome, Naples and Vienna far better than he knew New York, where he had lived many years of his life. In that he resembled the rest of humanity, who generally know less about what is notable in their home places than observant visitors know who stay there only a short time during the travels. What we pay for in time and labour seems more valuable, nothing pay, nothing value. A great foreign correspondent of his day, Henry W. Chambers, remained only six hours at Balbeck near Damascus, yet he wrote the clearest description that probably ever was written of the magnificent temples at Balbeck, and he wrote these descriptions too at Hong Kong, after many and varied experiences while visiting other places of greater importance. Many archaeologists and literary men before him had visited the moat of the great workers at Balbeck, still they had never observed as chambers observed, and so they missed seeing the arrowheads and all the other warlike instruments used in those ancient days, which had lain unnoticed among those huge pillars and great foundation stones. Although General Lou Wallace lived a long time at Jerusalem, he only imagined that there might have been an inner dungeon underneath the great prison, so when he wrote Ben Hur he put his leprous heroine into this imaginary prison house, a schoolteacher from Northern England with her tourist candle, afterward found the doorway of this prison, which Wallace had only imagined to be there. On their way from Egypt and Palestine to the Euphrates, travellers had for centuries passed over the same path in the desert, but it was reserved for a cutter of marble inscriptions. After all these centuries, to observe the Rosetta Stone, by the help of which archaeologists can now read the inscriptions upon the tablets in the ancient palaces of Babylon and Nineveh, millions and millions had seen the lid of a teak hill bobbing up and down over the boiling water before that Scotchman observed it while making watches. But he was the first of all those millions whose close observation led him to investigate this force of boiling water in the teak hill, then he applied this power to the steam engine, which is still the great propelling force of the world. From the time of the Garden of Eden, apples had fallen in the orchards of the world through all the harvest days. Of all the billions that had seen apples falling, only Sir Isaac Newton observed a law of gravitation that was involved in their falling. All the great discoveries began with nearly the same meager powers for observation that the rest of the world has, but early in life came to value above all other mental powers, this inculculable power to closely notice, and each made his realm of observation much richer for his discoveries. Why do the majority of us go through life seeing nothing of the millions of marvellous truths and facts, while only a few keep their eyes and ears wide open, and every day are busy in piling up what they have observed? The loss of our instincts seems to be the price we pay today for the few minor acquisitions we get from school and college. We put out our brains to make room for our learning, the man who acidiously cultivates his powers of observation and thus gains daily from his experiences what helps him to see farther and clearer everything in life that is worth seeing, has given himself a discipline that is much more important than the discipline of all the skills and the colleges without it. The greatest textbooks of the greatest universities are only the records of the observations of some close observer, whose better powers of seeing things have been acquired mainly while he was taking his courses in that university under his hat. The intellect is both the telescope and microscope. If it is rightly used, it shall observe thousands of things which are too minute and too distant for those who with eyes and ears neither see nor hear. The intellect can be made to look far beyond the range of what men and women ordinarily see, but not all the colleges in the world can alone confer this power. This is the reward of self-culture. Each must acquire it for himself and perhaps this is why the power of observing deeply and widely is so much often refined in those men and those women who have never crossed the threshold of any college but the university of hard knocks. The quickening power of science only he can know from whose own soul it gushes free. When we look back over our life and reflect how many things we might have seen and heard had we trained our powers of observation, we seem to have climbed little and to have spent most of our time upon plateaus while our achievements seem little better than scratches upon black marble. Mankind has a greater esteem for the degrees conferred by the university of observation and experience than for all the other degrees of all other universities in the world. The only thing that seems most to win the respect of real men and women for the degrees conferred by colleges is the fact that the graduates have first gained all that close observation and wide experience can confer. The lives of the men and the women who have been worthwhile keep reminding us how vastly more important is this education from ceaseless observation than all the mere learning from school courses. It takes ten pounds of the stuff gotten from observation and experience to carry one pound of school learning wisely. The thinking man will never ask you what college you have gone through, but what college has gone through you. And the ability and habit of observing deeply and broadly is the preparation we all need that the college may go through us. Confucius of China, Kito of Japan, Gotha of Germany, Arnold of England, Lincoln and Edison of America stand where they stand today in thought and action solely because they had in a masterly way educated their power of minute attention in building up a huge business or in amassing enormous riches. Such men as Rothschild, Rockefeller and Carnegie show us especially how vitally important to all material success is steadfast attendance at the school of attention. The colleges that today are advancing most rapidly in esteem are those which are recognizing more and more the importance of observation. They require their men to spend some portion of their college time and getting experience in their various lines through observing the practical workings of their calling. Medical students are in hospitals. Students of law attend courts. Theological students engage in mission work and engineers are found in shops. Neither lectures or speculations can take the place of these experiences. Each is helpful to the other when only one may be had. The experience from observing actual work is far more important. Opportunities for observation of practical matters along with theory is the modern idea toward which all the best modern institutions are tending in their efforts to fit men for the active business of life. Nor has greatness from careful observation and large experience distinguished men of action alone. Shakespeare, Gotha, Bunyan, Burns, Whittier, Longfellow, James, Whitcomb, Riley and a host of the great men of philosophy, science and literature are where they are today in the esteem of their fellow men and in their service to humanity because they were the keenest among the men acute in observation. Chapter 2, Animals and the Least Things The benefits brought to humanity through the study of lower animal life are incalculable and could not be told in one book. With all that vivisection and postmortem dissection have revealed to scientific examiners contagious and infectious diseases have been nearly removed from the human family. We have been taught to live better from observing animal habits in searching for food, in building their habitats, in their mood of living, in their fear of man and in the methods they adopt to preserve their health. All this knowledge has been gained for us for the upbuilding of humanity through the efforts of close observers. They have studied the cat by the hearth, the dog by the door, the horses in the pasture and stall, the pigs in their pens, and the sheep in their foals. Closely associated with the investigators of animal life are those who have observed the origin, habits and influence birds, insects and creeping things. But what we have learned from animals in the past seems only a trifle in comparison with what they will teach when we go to them with more serious purpose and more carefully observe them. The leaders in all of these investigations of animal life have all been distinguished for their power to discover in animals what has escaped other people. Professor Darwin's close observation of the doves, he fed at his door, opened up to him important suggestions and laid the foundation for his great treatise, the Origin of Species. When Professor Niles of the Boston School of Technology was a boy, he caught a minnow while returning from school. At his father's suggestion, he put the fish into a simple aquarium and studied its movements. When it died, he carefully examined its parts under a microscope, and this experience was the beginning of a vast knowledge of the animal realm. While a Philadelphia clergyman was visiting a farmer in Northern New Jersey, the family became perturbed because their dog had gone mad. They fastened it in the kitchen and sought somebody to kill it by shooting at it through the window. A neighbour observed the dog carefully and told them it was poisoned. He advised the family to list it in order that it might set some antidote for itself in fielder forest. He told them that cats, cattle and horses are often compelled to find an antidote for some poisonous herb they have eaten, and that the animals know more about such things than any teacher in the medical schools. As soon as the dog was unfastened, he hastened across the field to a brook and ate a weed that was growing beside the water. The dog soon returned to the house and ate heartily. After two weeks fast, the clergyman had followed the dog and observed the plant which it had eaten. After the dog had returned to the house, he uprooted the plant and took some of its leaves to a Philadelphia firm of chemists. Acting upon the firm's advice, he sent the leaves to the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, and they were found to be a valuable antidote for poison. Not only was humanity given a better medicine from this discovery, but the clergyman also derived a competency from it. This remedy for poisoning is often used in prescriptions, so even doctors sometimes go to the dogs for instructions. Like Professor Agassiz and Sir Oliver Lodge, many find their best instructors in domestic animals. The files around the house and the barn may be whole universities for developing the sciences. Through their dependence on nature, the hen is a more efficient instructor than the majority of college professors. She knows by instinct so much of the laws of nature that wise men may sit at their feet or her bill and learn. Perhaps she may seem a little foolish in proclaiming her achievements in egg laying by a cackle, but her knowledge of the necessities of life, her careful oversight of her breed, the way she uses her feet and her wings, her foreknowledge of approaching storms, her means of defending herself when attacked by hawks, her knowledge of the formation of the egg, and of the proper time to break the shell for the release of her chick. All these are worthy of the attention of even the greatest scientists. In an address at a poultry men's convention, Oliver Wendell Holmes said that chickens seemed to have in them much more to study than did Darwin's doves. While Holmes was once summering at Kenny Bunkport, Maine, he trained five chickens to come to his call to fly upon his head and to leap with open bells to catch a kernel of corn. Before the season closed, the chickens would come to his bedroom even after he had retired, making it necessary, as Dr. Holmes said, for the landlord to serve them up for dinner. Dr. Holmes' parody on Longfellow's A Sam of Life shows what a careful observer he was, while some of Longfellow's admirers presented the parody as a slight. Longfellow himself always treated it as complementary. He once told James T. Fields that in one couplet of the parody, Holmes had exiled the entire original poem, not like muffled drums repeating on the inside of the shell. Longfellow told Fields that there are always millions of men standing like chickens in the shell, with wings they know not how to use, having calls to a larger life outside of which they can see nothing, that some peck away until dead on the inside of the shell, while others assisted by a friend on the outside step out into a life beautiful and complete. In the egg or molecule we get nearer to God than we do through the telescope or by encircling the earth. He who lived nearest the first cause gets the best inspiration for visions of all greater sights or events, so the cottage is a happier place than the palace, for him he wishes to get better equipments with what shall arise finer thought and feeling. The cottage is the best preparatory skill for the mansion, provided always that the cottage course has been thorough. He who has worn his cottage life with manly dignity shall be the man to wear his mansion life with composure. Emerson said, the entire system of things gets represented in every particle. Un-easy is the head that wears the crown, and unfortunate is the man who gets a smattering of many things, yet does not know even one small thing thoroughly. The power of little things to give instruction and happiness should be the first lesson in life, and it should be inculcated deeply. The chief need of this discontented and simple world is to comprehend that in one blade of grass or the shading of an evening cloud there is sufficient reverence to fill the largest heart and sufficient science to occupy the greatest passion. We saw a delicate blue flower in the grass this morning, which I had never noticed before. It seemed a different flower from each angle, and when put under a magnifying glass had colours I had never noticed before in flower or art. The field where it was growing had been familiar to me for three score years and ten, yet the flower was entirely new to me. It was so dainty and attractive and inspiring that I felt I had lost something important to my spiritual growth all these years, something like the experience of Virgil, Eusote, Carlyle, Goushous or like Tennyson in the Holy Grail, who declares that he had left a real and wonderful life behind to follow the unknown. This little flower in the morning sunlight awakes thoughts of years long past, of the faces of marshaled hosts of battle, of eyes deep in calm with the smile of a loving mother's welcome, of the great forgiveness in a father's affection. Had I found that flower 70 years before, I believe my appreciation of the divine power would have been greater, my heart would have been more satisfied, my soul more fully eliminated and pervaded by a whole earpiece. We lose ourselves in all attempts to grasp the cause of which this small flower is the result. It is impossible to find words to convey the strange emotions which this newly found flower aroused, and to tell of the distant realms my imagination visited while I meditated there. If we would free ourselves from the perplexing cares which our daily duties demand, if we would forget the worries of each day, if the losses and disappointments and the wrongs of many years did not press themselves upon us, if the demands of many duties and the demands upon our retention and the calls of friends did not interrupt, we could find in contemplating this wee flower of the field a fund of happiness which years of sorrow and misfortune could not destroy. Bacon and Burke and Niebuhr discovered how much of grandeur can come into your life from the little things about us, but they all discovered it when it was too late to go back and live the ideal life of simplicity and individuality which was suggested to them by a drop of water and a hummingbird. The smallest things are the largest in importance, if they bring into our lives the largest thoughts and feelings and an incentive to largest actions for self-unhumanity. Why are we forever looking upon the horizon for what upon closer view lies at our feet? These little beauties of the field rebuke the wanderer and the eminent man when it says to all the world with a sweet smile and a dainty pout you could have found more in my life than has ever been learned from the sages. While Zinsendorf was stranded nearly a year upon a tiley island his vigorous mind was forced to occupy itself in observing the objects upon the shore. His examinations of the colours in the clamshell led him to say later in life at a meeting of philosophers that a lifetime study of these colours should develop more of the beautiful than all the manufactured colour combinations then known. Art has not yet been able to combine the shades shown in the shell of an oyster and the wings of the djinn bug have been enlarged and copied by coloured photography and will greatly influence all art hereafter. Man's needs shall be best supplied by beginning at the source and following the creator and developing them into things of beauty and service. Although the agricultural department at Washington spent eight million dollars in the study of seeds and their growth by sending experts to roam over the world for investigations yet the observations of Lither Burbank and many like investigators in the agricultural colleges throughout the country have made many more important discoveries. Their observations have brought about a greater increase of production to the acre than all the results of those who roamed the earth for the government and no one would say that their work was not a fair investment for the nation. Observation convinces us that the sooner we get down to the simplities of life the longer and healthier and nobler shall life become. The healthiest are those with one loaf and the natural hunger along with them. The noblest lives are those who are anxious to become as divine as it is possible for them to be or ever alert for little deeds of kindness how much richer life the poet lives who can sympathise with the failed mice like Burns who is lifted heavenward by the fringe gentian like Byrant who gets the messages of peace from the frosted pumpkin like Riley like Shakespeare we too may find tongues and trees books and running bricks sermons and stones and good in everything if we will but use our eyes for seeing our ears for hearing our heads for understanding and our hearts for feeling. The Perman's University gives its course everywhere and no entrance examination is requisite other than a mind willing to concentrate upon the sublime objects which by the million lie within our vision. Chapter 4 Home Reading Carlisle says that a collection of books is a true university in these days it might be added that often the smaller the collection the larger shall be the university education derived from libraries is unsafe for the dissipation as well as drunkenness ends in debauchery. Toward the end of his long and wide awake life Dr. Holmes advised a young correspondent to confine his reading to the bible Shakespeare and the Good Dictionary the list of men who have been lifted to higher regions of thought and feeling in action from reading many of these three would be too long to be compressed within the covers of one book books are like two edged swords dangerous unless one knows how to use them they either lead up or drag down and we sink or rise to the level of the books we read everyone reads but how many read to advantage Gotha the greatest of all the very greatest Germans said I have been learning how to read for the past 50 years but have not yet succeeded the majority of readers resemble our glasses their reading runs in and out and leaves no traces and some others are like housewives jellybags they pass all that is good and retain only the refuse at best only a small percentage of our life is spent in school the greater part of the remainder each must pass in the university of daily life where our education is derived from experience gained through close observation in daily contact with our fellows and from the fellowship of books fellowship fits the relation perfectly but there must be intimate intercourse such as this word implies or nothing it is with books as with life a man profits little from being merely acquainted with ten thousand and he may be inculculably injured from his intercourse with them but a few choice friends often the fewer the better bring a steady growth of higher spiritual power greater than can be had from all other influences combined so it is with books acquaintance with a thousand often renders a capable man incompetent but a few choice friends with whom he frequently and earnestly commutes left him in strength of intellect and well and tenderness and sweetness of feeling to be the pair of the worthiest the beginning of new england was the golden age of scholarship in america for many of the founders of these colonies had been reared in english universities such was the struggle in these bleak and barn colonies for existence during the first years that in a few generations the majority of their posterity were strangers to almost all the books of power and knowledge with which their forefathers were acquainted and were forced to clean all they harvested from the bible and the almanac especially them almanac the almanac was eagerly perused by every member of the family from the dawn of the year to its setting the reputed thrift of the plain people in this corner of the great world is largely attributable to the lessons of the almanac mainly per richards almanac which the bostonian franklin annually edited in philadelphia for over a quarter of a century his chief purpose was to drive home forcibly many lessons which might encourage the colonists to get the most out of their hard and isolated lives p body the successful man of business and magnificent philanthropist said that an almanac and a jackknife were the foundation of the education through which he ultimately did so much good for multitudes of his countrymen it should be interesting and instructive to know how many more during the jackknife epoch in new england and the generations since that time have been indebted to one book for the pluck and perseverance by which they have carved out a place of honor for themselves never were booked so eagerly so often and so carefully read as these per almanacs never perhaps as any other book except the bible been so potent and influencing shaping the life of a nation and shaping it to a high place among the nations whose beneficent influences have humanized the world many a writer has reminded us that the almanac was the textbook studied by our ancestry in beginning the enormous agricultural commercial merchantile manufacturing and financial interests which in four generations have placed us in front of the richest nations of the earth think of the many millions of dollars invested in library buildings and the many millions more invested in the bookstay shelter think of the 500 millions spent annually in public education and the hundreds of millions that have been put into college buildings and college breeding still from all this stupendous investment there will never come men and women who will make any more out of their learning than thousands of men and women of colonial days who knew the contents of no books other than the bible and the almanac the quality of the literary attainment of those reared in a library may be higher and perhaps not but wider and deeper self-knowledge self-respect self-confidence self-culture self-control are the supreme objects of all life struggle and educational struggle where a man gets the educational tools with which to accomplish all this is not at all important if an almanac can help one man to get the same life result as another man gets from the polishing of the greatest universities in the world the almanac is the peer of the university whether materials as insignificant as the almanac have been used to attain just such results the history of our country and of several other countries can readily prove three books made up the library of Lincoln the real splitter of Edison and Carnegie the telegraph operators but no three men of the nation were ever more successful in reaching the goals they set for themselves books are today the great universal means of knowing and knowing them depends upon reading them rightly it is not so important how many books we read but how we read them a well-read full is one of the most pistolential of blockheads one book read avails more than a thousand skimmed little reading and much thinking make a wise man much reading and little thinking has bred the race which the plain man call learned fools and these are mainly responsible for any ridicule that is put upon the work of school and college in these days when the printing press has largely superseded the pulpit and the platform it is vitally important that men shall be taught how to read rightly and shall be helped to habits of right reading and no school or college that is decently interested in the welfare of the people can disregard this one jury of teachers above all others much of the best in thought and feeling and conduct shall depend hereafter upon the books which we read with careful observation every man who has read himself into higher realms is under bounds to make the source of so much bliss and blessedness as admirable and as desirable as possible to all who are strangers to the most pleasant and profitable paths of literature it is not the quantity of our reading but the quality that makes it and us an influence for good to our fellows a man who has read 10 pages with real accuracy says John Ruskin is forevermore in some measure an educated person you might read all the books in the British Museum yet be an utterly illiterate and uneducated person our reading without digestion and assimilation is as just as our food without them Bacon says that reading makes a full man but fullness without digestion is dyspepsia the books whose reading impels us to live nobly undo noble service for others are the books and it is a wicked waste of time to read what is a negative quantity whoever masters one vital book can never become commonplace thoroughness is the master passion in reading and in every other undertaking as in every other undertaking those who have accumulated wisdom culture power riches are always prominent for their indefatigable painstaking thoroughness nothing to them is a strife for trifles make perfection and perfection is no trife those who have thought most and felt most and done most from their reading have brought this master passion to it when we begin to become acquainted with all the worthy men and women who traced the beginning of their worth to the careful reading of one book it seems almost a loss to the world to have the libraries of the world so large if they were all respectable occupants of their shelves it might be condoned but the copyright of millions of books is the only right human or divine for their existing at all many a country boy at the fireside during the long winter evenings has received inspiration from repeatedly reading one or two worthy books these have spurred him on to fight his way valiantly through college and from there to the heights in some worthy lifework if we are true to all that manhood involves there is no self-deception in the conviction that each one of us is born for kingship supreme kingship consists in a stronger moral state and a truer thoughtful state than that of other men which enables us to guide andreus the misguided and the illiterate every thoughtful man and woman ultimately discovers that all education and all literature are useful only so far as they confirm this calm and beneficent kingly power emerson's man thinking is the supreme about human beings the best that can be known and experienced lies asleep in books and one of the chief purposes for getting an education is to give us the well made head and the finer feeling to awake this best knowledge and experience in these sleeping princes de quincey reminds us that all the greatest books may be divided into the literature of knowledge and the literature of power they have all been written in utmost sincerity by the right minded and the strong minded they disclose boundless fields for soul refreshment and soul expansion in the march of civilization the men and the nations that have forged farthest ahead since guttenberg invented printing are the men and the nations that have had most to do with the few books of knowledge and power of the greatest and the wisest there can be no better test of a man's thought and feelings and actions than the books he reads and the books he keeps around him and there is none so desolate as the poor rich man who lives in a great bookless house and has never fed upon the dainties that are bred in books as john milton says the very presence of books is refining and the right kind of man would as soon think of building his house without windows as of furnishing it without books in every well regulated home of intelligent men and women the library is always one of the annual items of expenditure when we have learned how to consult the books of knowledge and power they let us mingle with the best society of all ages they make the mightiest men and women of words and deeds are advisors they bring us the gold of learning and the gems of thought and they furnish us with soul food which brings the proper kind of soul growth such books are the safest of companions for they protect us from vice and the inferior passions more than ever they are today indispensable for all who are striving to do the higher work of civilization and christianity every real book we really read gives us greater faith in the goodness and the nobility of life as lowell says adds another block to the climbing spire of a great soul the other short which swarm from the cosy marches of immoral brains the sort also who rack their brains for liquor do the devil's work for him and are as painful as the company of fools and vulgarians show an observant man your bookshelves and he'll tell you what you are the man who does not love some great book is not worth the time we spend in his company we are fortunate if we are not in some way contaminated by him if we knew the road they have traveled we should likely find that those of modern times who have merited the crown of kings and queens for their stronger moral state and their truer thoughtful state have had most to do with some literature of knowledge and power that they especially oftenist consulted the books of the greatest and wisest in their difficulties and have been spurred on by their messages to the thoughts and the deeds which made them worthy it is fortunate that today the greatest of books are the common property of the printers of the world for they are on this account the cheapest and many of them can't be had for the price of a poor man's dinner it needs many a page to record even the names of the men and women he had become somebody and have done something just from reading someone worthy book which has fallen into their hands many believe that franklin is the greatest american that has yet appeared and he has said that cotton maithers essay to do good gave me a turn of thinking which perhaps had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life as we become better acquainted with some of the great books in all departments of literature we are surprised to find how few of them have been written by college men this by no means belittles the good that may come from a true college course but it does seem to emphasize that great books need some other environment for their growth than exclusive college courses perhaps the need is solicitude communion with nature and frequent intercourse with the world's greatest and best in thought and feeling and action for the work college bread men are in a marked minority among the authors whose great books have been and are a potent force in shaping thought and conduct in the world it is notable how few of these have anything commendatory to say about the influence which their college life had upon them and their accomplishments many even of the textbooks of schools and colleges have come from men whose powers were shaped by no school how many textbooks of medicine and law were prepared by physicians and lawyers whose knowledge was gleaned mainly from keen observation and long experience and deep thought it was no mere college education but the sharpest home observation and strictest adherence to their instincts and their individuality that made for sure writers of mark twain the mississippi pilot brett hart and william dean howells the typesetters james witt comreilly the itinerant sign painter joel chandler harris a new gene failed the newspaper reporters and walt mitman the carpenter of the 4043 americans with over 20 millions of dollars to their credit only 61 had even a high school course many among them however had high class mentality and secured a comprehensive practical education they have evidently been as alert to receive the treasures hidden from them in the world of great books as they have been to perceive the treasuries hidden for them in their various enterprises so we find that they have consulted the master spirits of books after their daily tasks were done while myriad of those who scoff and snare at them now because of their millions were feasting frolicking and disappearing among the greatest types of american manhood today a large majority are the new rich men whatever else may be said about them all the world acknowledges that it is the pervenous in every land who do the largest part of the greatest work the larger our horizon becomes the stronger is our conviction that the man himself is mainly the architect of his own fate others may give an occasional lift but it is almost entirely his own work the college can do something for the headpiece and it should also give something for the heart side and the power to dare and to do but all the external training in the world can never attain for the man what he can attain through his own individual efforts provided he has lofty aims firm resolutions closely observes and strictly adheres to all his best inborn harsh there was no college for david homer socrates play to confucius alexander caesar dante luther shakespeare napoleon washington franklin goth jesus and tens of thousands of great or lesser men than these they all marked out their own course planned their own spiritual palaces all the barbed wire entanglements in the world did not retard their indomitable courage self-reliance and self-help perhaps the chief use of all learning establishments except those which have to do with what the germans call bread studies is to awaken the people's self-respect which is the basis of all virtue and to cultivate the powers that shall fit the people to consult for himself the knowledge and power books of the greatest and the wisest they also can in these days do yeoman's service in giving the bread studies through which men shall be better able to do the world's work and thereby earn better wages end of chapters one two and four of every man his own university by russell herman conwell an irish musical genius the inventor of the musical glasses this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org an irish musical genius the inventor of the musical glasses by dj odonahue readers of goldsmith will remember the passage in the ninth chapter of the vicar of wakefield where the ladies from london with all their accomplishments through the country bred ladies entirely into the shade they would talk says goldsmith of nothing but high life and high lived company with other fashionable topics such as pictures taste shakespeare and the musical glasses in this last phrase which is antithetical or nothing goldsmith expressed some contempt for an invention which for several years previously had excited much comment and a good deal of amusement among the higher classes of english and irish society the vicar of wakefield was written in seventeen sixty one when richard pockrich the inventor of the instrument referred to had been dead two years goldsmith had certainly heard a good deal of this remarkable man a countryman of his own and had not improbably listened to his performances upon the glasses that he expressed at least a shade of contempt for this invention in his now proverbial phrase is clear he had not an excessive admiration of shakespeare as we know but he delicately suggests the immense distance which separates the mind of the author of hamlet and that to which we owe the musical glasses that in short this last was one of the lowest conceivable examples of the exercise of ingenuity but we may employ in pockrich's defense the words or their sense which john oakheave the admirable dramatist is said to have used them when he heard that scott in saint ronan's well had put into the mouth of one of his characters what he considered the contemptuous phrase from shakespeare to oakheave quote from the top to the bottom of the ladder remarked oakheave well he might have placed me a few rungs up pockrich was by no means a contemptible person he was one of the many notable irish men of his day his ingenuity was amazing and was employed in a hundred different schemes and inventions some of which though scouted as chimerical by his rather unprogressive age were eminently worthy of consideration and were well within the region of the practical the invention of the musical glasses has proved to be his most famous idea it is the only one of his many suggestions which his contemporaries did not laugh out of court but it is not by any means his highest claim to remembrance the writers of his day recognized and appreciated the concourse of sweet sounds produced by pockrich from ordinary drinking glasses and lest modern readers should feel inclined to smile at the praise bestowed upon this ingenious contrivance it need only be mentioned that some of the greatest minds of the time were enraptured with what might now be regarded as a mere toy there are various contemporary references to the musical glasses which have more than common interest the letters especially of the notabilities of the period often allude to them in one of his letters to mason gray the poet says under date december eight seventeen sixty one quote here is mr. de la val and a charming set of glasses that sing like knight and gales and we have concerts every other night and quote hoarse wallpole in one of his letters also mentions them quote the opera's flourish more than in any latter years the composer is gluck a german he is to have a benefit at which he is to play a set of drinking glasses which he modulates with water i think i have heard you speak of having seen some such thing and quote and finally in an advertisement in the saint james's chronicle of december third seventeen sixty one there is the following paragraph quote at mr. sharriden's lecture on elocution miss Lloyd succeeds miss ford in performing on the musical glasses for the amusement of genteel company and quote benjamin franklin made a small improvement upon pockridge's invention and called it by the italian name of armonica which has been englished by the edition of the letter h this is not of course the small toy generally known by that name brockhill new another contemporary refers to it as the instrument quote with which the celebrated miss davies not long since so agreeably entertain the town and quote and adds quote it is no more than an improvement upon mr. pockridge's glasses and it is to this gentleman's original invention we are indebted for one of the most pleasing instruments within the compass of sound and quote gluck the eminent composer gave public performances in england and abroad upon pockridge's glasses and bethoven mozart and other great musicians wrote music for the improved form devised by franklin the letter in a letter to becaria in seventeen sixty two refers to pockridge thus quote you have doubtless heard the sweet tone that is drawn from a drinking glass by passing a wet finger round its brim one mr. pockridge a gentleman from ireland was the first who thought of playing tunes formed of such tones he collected a number of glasses of different sizes fixed them near each other on a table and tuned them by putting into them water more or less as each note required the tones were brought out by passing his fingers round the brim and quote franklin goes on to inform becaria that dr. delaval frs had attempted an improvement upon pockridge's invention by greater care in choosing his glasses and he proceeds to explain his own amended form the armonica of which he gives a drawing his idea was simply to fix upon a stand a succession of globes of varying sizes which were also to be played upon by wet fingers it is curious that though pockridge's musical glasses became the talk of the country so little was known of himself personally that one would think he had never done anything else but perform upon his delightful instrument yet he was a man of real parts with a passion for projects and new plans for the benefit of ireland and humanity as we shall show some of his ideas though ridiculed by his countrymen are not at all despicable in the light of present knowledge he was indeed far in advance of his age but only two biographical dictionaries of the hundreds published notice his name and both of the notices necessarily meager are by the present writer footnote a couple of dozen lines in the poets of ireland by dj odonohue and the fuller notice by the same in the dictionary of national biography and footnote perhaps a fuller sketch of pockridge and of some of his ideas will not be unwelcome to irish men who are always willing to hear of anything tending to the greater credit of the country but to conclude the reference to the musical glasses john carter at pilkington a worthless son of doubtful parents and who rooked oliver goldsmith gives in his memoirs a book so scarce as not to be in any of the dublin libraries an interesting account of pockridge who had engaged him to sing at his performances through ireland and england we learn that the inventor was when pilkington knew him quote a tall middle-aged gentleman with a bag wig and a sword on end quote and that he was able to earn six pounds a day then a very large sum by his entertainments the memoirs also describe him as a perfect master of music who had performed most of hundle's finest compositions and his skill in music is thus testified to quote he pulled from his sleeve sixteen large pins and from his pocket a small hammer with this he drove the pins into the deal table all ranged one above the other and some almost in as far as the head he then took from his side pocket two pieces of brass wire and demanded what tune I would have I told him the black joke then lay your ears to the table says he here and admire I did so and to my infinite amazement he played it with all its variations so as to sound almost like a dull summer encouraged by the applause I gave to this uncommon instrument he took a parcel of drinking glasses and tuned them by putting different quantities of water in each upon these he played a number of the newest tunes in the most elegant taste giving me delight and satisfaction and quote another contemporary a poet and a sometime friend of pock rich named Brock Hill Newberg already mentioned who hailed from county cabin and was a gentleman of wealth and position wrote many poems among them one upon his countrymen whom he calls captain with the intention of ridiculing his projects this poem called the projector was to be the avant courier of an heroic poem in twenty four books to be published by subscription and to be entitled the pock read which would tell exhaustively the inspiring life and adventures of the restless inventor of new plans for the improvement of everybody and everything this threatened epic however did not appear but the notes to the projector which the author says was his first poetical attempt and was written somewhere about 1745 tell us of some of pock rich's schemes newberg exempts the musical glasses from ridicule alluding to them as follows quote mr. pock rich's skill in music has been made known by his no less surprising than agreeable performance on drinking glasses an invention entirely his own and i cannot but wish that drinking glasses instead of being as too frequently the instruments of soddishness and debauchery were often are applied to so innocent and entertaining a purpose end quote he adds an antidote concerning the power of music which will serve a future commentator upon congreaves famous line music hath charms to soothe the savage breast it should be premised that pock rich's inventions often led him into debt quote it has been already mentioned that mr. pock rich by an invention entirely his own has converted drinking glasses into one of the most pleasing instruments that happy chance or invention has yet discovered to judge of the surprising effects of mr. pock rich's performance on this instrument let the reader be acquainted with the following story which may be dependent upon as fact mr. pock rich in his brewery near island bridge happening to be one day seized by bailiffs thus addressed them gentlemen i am your prisoner but before i do myself the honor to attend you give me leave as an humble performer in music to entertain you with a tune sir exclaimed one of the bailiffs we came here to execute our warrant not to hear tunes gentleman says the captain i submit to your authority but in the interim while you are only taking a dram here jack calling to his servant bring a bottle of the rosa solis i lately distilled i say gentleman before you take a dram i shall dispatch my tune in the meanwhile he flourishes a prelude on the glasses and afterwards displays his skill through all the pleasing turns and variations of the black joke the monsters charmed with the magic of his sounds for some time stand and gaze at length recovering their trance they thus accost the captain sir upon your parole of honor to keep the secret we will give you your liberty tis well playing upon the glasses is not more common if it were i believe our trade would find little employment and quote newberg informs us that park rich would have obtained the post of chapel master at our mug cathedral which he had applied for but that arch bishop bolter died before the appointment could be made out he also speaks with praise of park rich's musical compositions and says that the musician had fully intended to take out his degree of doctor of music at trinity college dublin and to give a public performance of the pieces he had composed for the examination but was prevented by other matters one more reference to the musical glasses before dealing with park rich's other projects may be permitted the reverent dr. thomas cambell lld in his very interesting and very patriotic book published towards the close of the last century and called a philosophical survey of the south of ireland gives a short list of eminent natives of ireland and especially praises park rich whom he calls poke rich for his cleverness his name he says quote ought not to be lost to the lovers of harmony as he has enriched the art by his invention of the musical glasses now improved into the harmonica an instrument if not of the greatest force yet certainly of the sweetest tones in the compass of harmony end quote those who have heard the musical glasses skillfully played will readily admit their extraordinary sweetness of tone such as have not listened to them can hardly imagine their fairy music the present writer has often heard them played in london to delighted crowds not one person in which probably had the least idea that an irishman had procured them the pleasure but as already stated park rich was emphatically not a man of one idea his brain teamed with projects his private fortune left him by his father which was considerable nearly four thousand pounds a year according to pilkington only one thousand pounds if we are to believe new berg was lavishly spent in carrying out his schemes he practically reduced himself to poverty by the projects upon which he embarked like laturity of mullier he was often obliged while dazzling his friends with talk of millions of money to borrow a mere trifle the leading facts of his life may be told in a few words he was born in the county of monahan in or about sixteen ninety although obviously of English descent on the paternal side his family had long been settled in the north at dairy lusk county monahan where they held extensive property the family which originally came from suri became extinct about eighteen twenty park rich's father raised and commanded an independent company during the williamite wars fought through the late happy revolution and was dangerously wounded at the siege of athelon in seventeen fifteen richard park rich his son who had settled in dublin established a brewery and distillery at island bridge but failed to make it pay it is alluded to by new berg in the lines in brewers grains you gold can find to all such treasure i am blind when later in life he competed for the royal dublin society's premium for the best barrel of ale and failed to obtain it his contemporaries suggested that he consoled himself by philosophically and courageously drinking his own brew one of his pet projects was to reclaim the bogs of ireland to drain them thoroughly and cultivate the land and to plant vineyards on such parts as seemed suitable he strongly advocated the culture of the vine in ireland and was laughed at for his pains yet an italian visitor not long ago told the press that some parts of ireland were eminently suitable for vine culture park rich wrote pamphlets in support of his theories and tried to interest parliament and the public in them without success he spent a large sum of money in raising geese on several thousand acres of barren mountainous land in the heart of wicklow and declared that if properly encouraged he could supply the whole of the markets of ireland great britain and france new berg dismisses his project of reclaiming the bogs in these lines you think peru lies in a bog i not see there but heath and fog let sons of ease enjoy the shade the heaven their indolence has made thy cares near droop or public good thy hopes thy fears thy schemes still brood me thinks thy labors to be guile the barren plains of allen smile where shook the trembling bog behold the verdant lawns new scenes unfold or where the wandering shepherd's trade expands the gay enameled mead these spongy fens now firm produce the grain or grapes in livening juice and quote there can be no doubt that pockridge had some extravagant beliefs for he was a bit of an astrologer and talked of building an observatory on one of the wicklow hills for astrological purposes to these several ideas of his newberg devotes the following lines from humbler sounds that soothe our ears you seek the music of the spheres when far from ken of human sight you you seek some mountains airy height wrapped in the clouds you there survey a boundless tract of land and sea or with a leveled tube from far describe a bog in every star or else to human cares descending you read those fates you still are mending his numerous flocks the bard next sees not flocks of sheep but flocks of geese as geese by cackling saved a state footnote the cackling of the roman geese which alarmed the citizens when the capital was attacked and footnote so grazing geese may mend thy fate see the vast mountains and the rocks now covered or with cackling flocks nor less in number than those bands that once or spread the grecian sands footnote alluding to xerxes invasion of greece with three million of geese as recorded by herodotus and footnote he had excellent musical ideas however and saw long before anyone else the potentialities of the drum he planned an orchestra of drums 20 in number varying in size and tone from the smallest trebles to the base tones which were to be placed in a circle and to be played by one person who was to stand in the center and strike the drums as required newberg mentions the project in the lines in thunder next you strike mine ear when from the drums tumultuous sound you deal your marshal thumps around in softer strains my ears delight nor choose a drum but when i fight after spending both money and time upon the invention he turned to another project this time a humanitarian one he proposed to build unsinkable ships of metal for the maritime powers and to supply each man of war with 500 tin boats which he contended would float under any or all circumstances and would prove invaluable in cases of shipwreck or collision newberg however was one of the unconvinced he says of pokrich my friend who dreads the boisterous main in glorious seeks the rural plain he was equally skeptical as to the sanity of another of pokrich's plans which was to provide everyone with a pair of wings for flying our inventor firmly held that the day would come and soon if he obtained the necessary capital when men and women would never dream of walking when as newberg says it might be as common for men to call for their wings as now they call for their boots and when pleasure began to grow dull in the east could order their wings and be off to the west newberg's reference to this at the time amazing suggestion is contained in the lines you wing your daring flight and range the azure fields of light my dastard soul of humbler birth grovels contented here on earth pokrich's unfortunate marriage in 1745 footnote i have recovered the record of his marriage on 23rd april 1745 with margaret widow of francis white esquire and footnote with a widow whom he had been given to understand possessed much money but who proved apart from a small joint share of 200 pounds a year to be heavily in debt was naturally made much fun of by the considerate wits of his day the couplet from flights sublime in liquid air descending you address the fair is that which opens newberg's illusion to the event which proved anything but happy for pokrich his wife eventually ran away with theophilus ciber the theatrical celebrity but the boat which carried them to scotland was shipwrecked and the elopers were lost with everybody else on board this was in 1758 just a year before pokrich's own tragic death in 1745 he had endeavored to get into the irish parliament as member for monahan but had failed he contested dublin in 1749 but the political papers and humorous ballads addressed by him to the electors not withstanding again failed that he had strong opinions upon financial matters seems clear from newberg's lines quote hear him in senate's next dispense the nerves and force of eloquence or godlike raised the uplifted thunder against naves who nations plunder pokrich believed fully in prophecy and in all kinds of charms and was induced to put himself forward as a candidate for parliamentary honors by the following quote facts which says newberg were not more frequently than solemnly related by mr. pokrich himself he tells us sitting one morning in an apartment in his brewery near island bridge the doors of his house at that time being bolted and double locked he observed a very old woman talking to his servant the contents of which conversation were as follows the old woman inquires whether captain pokrich lived there upon being answered in the affirmative she replies i am sorry to see a gentleman that once lived so well obliged to take up with so poor inhabitation the house being at that time extremely ruinous and not inhabited for some years before but old as i am added the hag i shall live to see the day when mr. pokrich shall enjoy the estate of his ancestors be returned as his father was before him night of the shire and possessed the first honors of his country having said so much she suddenly disappeared the doors of the house still continuing double locked and bolted some little time after mr. pokrich in a house he frequented happens to meet with a man born deaf and dumb the seer for such he appears to have been fixes his eyes for some time upon mr. pokrich with a more than ordinary attention then with a piece of chalk delineates upon the wainscot the outlines of a magnificent fabric proceeding he draws a coach with six horses and a numerous equipage every now and then looking upon mr. pokrich then pointing to the draft as it were thereby appropriating these marks of grandeur to the person he had in his eye and quote but the project of pokrich which excited most comment was his plan for the transfusion of blood he declared that he could by connecting a sick person with a healthy one by a pipe or tube so revive the former in improving his blood that death would be almost unknown hence the lines in the projector pokrich shall live to see old death resign his pestilential breath where at the wags made merry and it is alleged that many of the rectors vickers and incumbents of the country became seriously alarmed about the burial fees which made so large a part of their income and joined with the heirs apparent and others who had reversions and remainders in petitioning parliament against the impious plan to mollify them as the story goes pokrich agreed to accept a government measure enabling them to realize after the relative or other person upon whom they had a claim should have reached the age of 999 years when also burial fees would be recoverable from matthew's alas this sup however was not too well received by cerberus further discussion of our inventors projects seems unnecessary among them was one for turning the archbishop of toms palace at mount eclese quote near dublin into a cake house and for that purpose treated with his grace to whom he made several presence of young pigeons and quote he wanted to make an irish box hall of mount eclese but the scheme never came to fruition he did not hesitate to express his belief that quote if he lived a few years he did not doubt to see every scheme prediction and prophecy of his brought to bear and fulfilled and quote newberg informs us that he was quote in conversation a pleasant jocular and agreeable companion and but seldom discovered any marks of an unsound mind and quote there is no question that pokrich had his eccentricities he was admittedly an old bow in dress and endeavored when well on in age to pass as a young man just to add one more to the many proofs that there is nothing new under the sun not even in toilet recipes newberg's explanation of pokrich's unwrinkled appearance may be quoted it was due to the latter's recipe which is taken from one of the notes to the projector take common brown paper steep it in vinegar then apply it to the forehead the skin about the eyes or any other wrinkled part let it lie on some time every half hour renewing the application the wrinkles not only disappear but the cheeks glow with a vermel that excels the power of paint mr. pokrich has practiced his experiment for some years past with great success and quote evidently pokrich was a man of unlimited resource he had among his many other peculiarities a liking for religious disquisition about 1745 when one thomas cynic a new apostle a native of redding in berkshire and born in 1721 came to dublin to convert the inhabitants to his own religious views pokrich was one of his early followers a fact duly recorded by newberg oh what convulsive pangs and throws tend the new birth of battered bows from the raised tub he hears the rant the new the moving godly can't the new the pious consolation that faith alone works out salvation after a few months in dublin the new reformer cynic disappeared after as newberg suggests fleecing his flock pokrich's death was a sad and unexpected one in the year 1759 being then upon one of his musical tours through england he happened to be lodging at hamlin's coffee house sweetings alley near the royal exchange london when a disastrous fire supposed to have been originated in his own room perhaps owing to some new experiment broke out one night and destroyed several houses the unfortunate musician was among those who perished in the flames the gentleman's magazine in its account of the affair refers to him as mr. pokrich who had invented a new kind of music upon glasses the ladies magazine for 1794 page 178 quoting from a life of dr. franklin says quote the tone produced by rubbing the brim of a drinking glass with a wet finger has been generally known on mr. pokrich and irishman by placing on a table a number of glasses of different sizes and tuning them by partly filling them with water endeavored to form an instrument capable of playing tunes he was prevented by an untimely end from bringing his invention to any degree of perfection after his death some improvements were made upon his plan the sweetness of the tone induced dr. franklin to make a variety of experiments and he at length formed that elegant instrument which he has called the armonica and quote after pokrich's death newberg wrote a mock elegy which has some amusing lines commemorating the projectors various schemes and inventions and with a sly illusion to his gallantries mourn him ye bogs in tears discharge your tides no more shall pokrich tap your spongy hides ye geese ye ganders cackle doleful lays no more his mountain tops your flocks shall graze be silent dumb ye late harmonious glasses free from surprise serenely sleepy lasses let drums unbrazed in hollow murmurs tell how he that waked their thunders silent fell let tempests swell the surge no more his boat secure from wreck shall on the billows float no more ye sons of nappy shall his beer or nut brown ale your drooping spirits cheer to his own castles built sublime in air quitting his geese and bogs and glassy care with blood infused and like a meteor bright on his own pinions pock has winged his flight end of an irish musical genius the inventor of the musical glasses by dj odonohue