Chapter V: Mechanisms, Processes, and Organizations (2)

The launch of the _Neptune_ took place at eleven
o'clock in the morning, and for an hour or so previously
spectators had been assembling. Picture to yourself a great
steel vessel--merely the hull, of course--500 feet long and
as high as a three-story house. Close to the bow is a gaily
decorated platform, crowded with people, while thousands
occupy stands on either side, and still more stand on the open
ground and on every point from which a view can be obtained.
On the bow of the vessel there is hung a festoon of flowers
with a bottle of wine concealed in it, while round the bow
passes a cord, the ends of which are supporting the weights
which hang just over the dog-shores.

As the clock strikes, the lady who is to perform the
ceremony, a royal duchess, arrives upon the scene and takes
her place on the elevated platform close to the bow of the
ship. A short religious service is conducted by the chaplain
of the dockyard assisted by the choir of the dockyard church,
and then the duchess leans forward, takes hold of the wine
bottle suspended by the floral festoon, draws it towards her
and lets it go again. As the bottle swings back and dashes
to pieces against the steel stem of the vessel, she says,
"Success to the _Neptune_ and all who sail in her."

Then an official steps forward with a mallet and
chisel. The former he hands to the lady, while the latter he
holds with its edge upon the cord. Now is the critical moment,
and among all the thousands of spectators not a sound is to
be heard. A few blows of the mallet upon the chisel and the
cord is severed; exactly at the same moment the two weights
fall, the dog-shores are knocked out of the way, and the
great vessel begins slowly and majestically to glide down to
the water. The few remaining blocks under the bow are pulled
over by the motion of the ship, and fall with a crash, which
is soon drowned by the cheers of the people and sounds of
patriotic airs played by the band.

There are a large number of sailors and workmen upon
the ship, and as soon as she is in the water they drop the
anchors and bring her to rest, while tugs rush to her and take
her in tow to the dock where she is to be fitted up.

But what becomes of the cradle? It is made in two
halves, the part on each side being connected to that on the
other by chains passing under the keel, and in these chains
there is a connection which can be released by pulling a cord
from the deck of the ship. When the ship has reached the
water, therefore, and the cradle has done its work, the cord
is pulled and the two halves of the cradle, being mainly of
timber, float off, to be captured and towed back to shore.

The grease upon the launching ways and cradle is
melted by the heat due to friction, and much of it is to be
found floating upon the water immediately after the launch, so
numbers of small boats immediately put off and men with scoops
collect it.[63]

[63] Thomas W. Corbin: _Engineering of To-day_. By courtesy of the
publishers, Seeley, Service & Co., London.

* * * * *

The word _head_ affords a good example of radiation.
We may regard as the central meaning that with which we are
most familiar,--a part of the body. From this we get (1) the
"top" of anything, literally or figuratively, whether it
resembles a head in shape (as the head of a cane, a pin, or
a nail), or merely in position of preëminence (as the head
of a page, the head of the table, the head of the hall); (2)
figuratively, "leadership," or concretely, "a leader" (the
head of the army, the head of the school); (3) the "head" of a
coin (the side on which the ruler's head is stamped); (4) the
"source" of a stream, "spring," "well-head," "fountain-head";
(5) the hydraulic sense ("head of water"); (6) a "promontory,"
_as Flamborough Head_, _Beechy Head_; (7) "an armed force," a
"troop" (now obsolete); (8) a single person or individual, as
in "five head of cattle"; (9) the "main points," as in "the
heads of a discourse" (also "notes" of such points); (10)
mental power, "intellectual force."

Here again there is no reason for deriving any of
our ten special senses from any other. They are mutually
independent, each proceeding in a direct line from the central
primary meaning of head.

The main process of radiation is so simple that it
is useless to multiply examples. We may proceed, therefore, to
scrutinize its operations in certain matters of detail.

In the first place, we observe that any derived
meaning may itself become the source of one or more further
derivatives. It may even act as a center whence such
derivatives radiate in considerable numbers, precisely as if
it were the primary sense of the word.

Thus, in the case of _head_, the sense of the "top"
of anything immediately divides into that which resembles a
human head in (1) shape, or (2) position merely. And each of
these senses may radiate in several directions. Thus from
(1) we have the head of a pin, of a nail, of a barrel, of an
ulcer, "a bud" (in Shakespeare); from (2) the head of a table,
of a hall, of a printed page, of a subscription-list. And some
of these meanings may also be further developed. "The head of
the table," for instance, may indicate position, or may be
transferred to the person who sits in that position. From the
head of an ulcer, we have the disagreeable figure (so common
that its literal meaning is quite forgotten), "to come to a
head," and Prospero's "Now does my project gather to a head,"
in _The Tempest_.

Sense No. 2, the "forefront" of a body of persons,
the "leader," cannot be altogether separated from No. 1.
But it may come perfectly well from the central meaning. In
every animal but man the head actually precedes the rest of
the body as the creature moves. At all events, the sense of
"leadership" or "leader" (it is impossible to keep them apart)
has given rise to an infinity of particular applications and
idiomatic phrases. The head of a procession, of an army, of a
class, of a revolt, of a "reform movement," of a new school of
philosophy--these phrases all suggest personal leadership, but
in different degrees and very various relations to the persons
who are led, so that they may all be regarded as radiating
from a common center.

By a succession of radiations the development of
meanings may become almost infinitely complex. No dictionary
can ever register a tithe of them, for, so long as a language
is alive, every speaker is constantly making new specialized
applications of its words. Each particular definition in the
fullest lexicon represents, after all, not so much a single
meaning as a little group of connected ideas, unconsciously
agreed upon in a vague way by the consensus of those who use
the language. The limits of the definition must always be
vague, and even within these limits there is large scope for
variety.

If the speaker does not much transgress these limits
in a given instance, we understand his meaning. Yet we do
not and cannot see all the connotations which the word has
in the speaker's mind. He has given us a conventional sign
or symbol for his idea. Our interpretation of the sign will
depend partly on the context or the circumstances, partly on
what we know of the speaker, and partly on the association
which we ourselves attach to the word in question. These
considerations conduct us, once more, to the principle on
which we have so often insisted. Once more we are forced to
admit that language, after all, is essentially poetry. For it
is the function of poetry, as Sainte-Beuve says, not to tell
us everything, but to set our imaginations at work: "La poésie
ne consiste pas à tout dire, mais à tout faire rêver."

Besides the complexity that comes from successive
radiation, there is a perpetual exchange of influences among
the meanings themselves. Thus when we speak of a man as "the
intellectual head of a movement," _head_ means "leader" (No.
3), but has also a suggestion of the tenth sense, "mind."
If two very different senses of a word are present to the
mind at the same moment, the result is a pun, intentional
or unintentional. If the senses are subtly related, so that
they enforce or complement each other, our phrase becomes
imaginatively forcible, or, in other words, recognizable
poetry as distinguished from the unconscious poetry of
language.

So, too, the sudden re-association of a derived
sense with the central meaning of a word may produce a
considerable change in effect. _Head_ for "leader" is no
longer felt as metaphorical, and so of several other of the
radiating senses of this word. Yet it may, at any moment,
flash back to the original meaning, and be revivified as a
conscious metaphor for the nonce. "He is not the _head_ of his
party, but their mask"; "The leader fell, and the crowd was a
body without a _head_."

Radiation is a very simple process, though its
results may become beyond measure complicated. It consists
merely in divergent specialization from a general center. It
is always easy to follow the spokes back to the hub.[64]

[64] Greenough and Kittredge: _Words and Their Ways in English
Speech_. By courtesy of the publishers, The Macmillan Company,
New York City.

Write a theme on any of the following subjects, adapting
your style to the character of the subject--formal or informal,
impersonal or personal, etc.

In each of these subjects discover the root principle
which will serve as your controlling object, and state it in a
sentence. State also how you expect to make the theme interesting.

1. How to handle a swarm of bees.

2. How a publicity campaign is managed.

3. The process of inoculation.

4. The process of fumigation.

5. How an ingot of steel is made.

6. The physiological process of stimulation.

7. The process of reforming criminals.

8. How to break into society.

9. How to memorize a long sonata.

10. How to make a well.

11. The process of civilization.

12. How a locomotive is assembled.

13. How a torpedo is launched.

14. How good literary taste is acquired.

15. The process of naturalization.

16. The process of simplification in language.

17. The process of organizing a "clean up" campaign.

18. How big steel beams are put in place on the twentieth story.

19. The process of fertilization of land.

20. The process of inoculating land for alfalfa.

21. The process of making a trial balance sheet.

22. How to audit the accounts of a club, store, treasurer, or
organization.

23. The process of pasteurization.

24. The process of modulation in music.

25. How to fire a blast furnace.

VII. Write the material contained in the explanations of the blow-pipe
and the hydraulic cartridge (page 161) in the more picturesque
form of a personal experience, showing how you, or some one, used
the mechanism for a particular purpose. Which method of treatment
is more effective? Why? Would you be willing to lay down a
general rule about the method of treatment? If not, why not?

VIII. Use the method employed to explain dredges (page 170) to write a
theme that shall discriminate briefly the various types of the
following:

1. Valves.

2. Tractors.

3. Egg-beaters.

4. Styles in landscape painting.

5. Systems of bookkeeping.

6. Methods of learning a foreign language.

7. Churns.

8. Methods of packing apples.

IX. In the following selection you will find an account of how an
engineering problem was solved. With this as a model, write an
account of any of the following:

1. The Shoshone, or Keokuk, or Roosevelt Dam.

2. The Panama Canal.

3. The Cape Cod Canal.

4. The Chicago Drainage Canal.

5. The Chicago Breakwater.

6. The Galveston Sea Wall.

7. The Key West Railroad.

8. The Mississippi Levees.

9. An Army Cantonment.

10. A Shipyard.

11. A Big City Subway.

12. Some Development in Your Own Town.

The construction of the reservoirs and aqueduct for
bringing a daily supply of five hundred million gallons into
New York from the Catskill Mountains has involved engineering
work of great magnitude, and in some cases of considerable
perplexity and difficulty. As it turned out, the most serious
problem was encountered at the Hudson River, where the
engineers had to determine upon the best method for conducting
the water past that great natural obstacle.

Four alternative plans were considered: first, to
lay steel pipes in trenches dredged across the river bottom;
second, to drive a tunnel through the glacial deposit in the
river bottom; third, to carry the aqueducts across the river
on a bridge; and lastly, to build a huge inverted siphon at
a depth sufficient to bring it entirely within the solid
underlying rock. The last was the plan adopted.

To determine the depth and character of the rock,
fifteen vertical holes were drilled from the surface of
the river, and two inclined holes, of different degrees of
inclination, were driven from each shore. Six of the vertical
holes reached bed rock, and one of them in the center of the
river reached an ultimate depth of 768 feet, when it had to
be abandoned without reaching bed rock. This boring developed
the fact that the present Hudson River flows in an old glacial
gorge which has been filled up with deposits of silt, sand,
gravel, clay, and boulders to a depth of over 800 feet.

Now it was realized that a deep-pressure tunnel,
to be perfectly reliable, must lie in absolutely sound and
unfissured rock; and since it was impossible to test the
rock by vertical borings made from scows anchored in the
river, the engineers determined to explore the underlying
material by means of inclined borings driven from either
shore. Accordingly, two shafts were sunk to a depth of between
two and three hundred feet, and from them two diamond drill
borings were started, which ultimately crossed at a depth of
1500 feet below the surface of the river. A good rock was
found at that level. To make the survey more reliable, a
second pair of holes was drilled at a less inclination, which
crossed at a depth of 950 feet below the river surface. The
rock was found to be perfectly satisfactory, and such water
as was found was limited in extent and due to well-understood
geologic causes.

It was therefore determined to sink the east and
west shafts to a depth of from 1150 to 1200 feet below ground
surface, and connect them by a tunnel 3022 feet in length at
a depth of 1100 feet below the river surface. The shafts have
been sunk, that on the West Shore to 1153 feet, the East
Shore shaft to 1185 feet, and the boring of the tunnel toward
the center of the river has made good progress, the easterly
section having advanced at the present writing about 260
feet, and the westerly section 170 feet from their respective
shafts. Both the shafts and the tunnel will be lined with a
high grade of Portland cement concrete which will give them a
finished internal diameter of 14 feet. The aqueduct reaches
the Hudson River at an elevation of 400 feet above mean water
level. Hence the total head of water is about 1500 feet, and
the total pressure on each square foot of the tunnel is
46 1/2 tons, which is balanced with a wide margin of safety by
the weight of the super-incumbent mass of rock, silt, and
water.[65]

[65] "The Catskill Water Supply Tunnel," in the _Scientific American_,
vol. 104. By courtesy of The Scientific American Publishing
Company.

X. In the following account of an emotional and mental process what
root principle do you find? Does the author show traces of
influence from the intended readers, the American public? Does
the author take too much for granted in the reader, or not
enough? Does she show tact in approaching the reader? Write
the account in an impersonal, abstract way, as if you were
reporting "a case" for a statistician, and then give your
estimate of the two. What light does your estimate throw upon the
advice to make the actors in a process specific?

How long would you say, wise reader, it takes to
make an American? By the middle of my second year in school
I had reached the sixth grade. When, after the Christmas
holidays, we began to study the life of Washington, running
through a summary of the Revolution, and the early days of the
Republic, it seemed to me that all my reading and study had
been idle until then. The reader, the arithmetic, the song
book, that had so fascinated me until now, became suddenly
sober exercise books, tools wherewith to hew a way to the
source of inspiration. When the teacher read to us out of a
big book with many bookmarks in it, I sat rigid with attention
in my little chair, my hands tightly clasped on the edge of
my desk; and I painfully held my breath, to prevent sighs of
disappointment escaping, as I saw the teacher skip the parts
between bookmarks. When the class read, and it came my turn,
my voice shook and the book trembled in my hands. I could
not pronounce the name of George Washington without a pause.
Never had I prayed, never had I chanted the songs of David,
never had I called upon the Most Holy, in such utter reverence
and worship as I repeated the simple sentences of my child's
story of the patriot. I gazed with adoration at the portraits
of George and Martha Washington, till I could see them with
my eyes shut. And whereas formerly my self-consciousness had
bordered on conceit, and I thought myself an uncommon person,
parading my schoolbooks through the streets, and swelling with
pride when a teacher detained me in conversation, now I grew
humble all at once, seeing how insignificant I was beside the
Great.

As I read about the noble boy who would not tell a
lie to save himself from punishment, I was for the first time
truly repentant of my sins. Formerly I had fasted and prayed
and made sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, but it was more
than half play, in mimicry of my elders. I had no real horror
of sin, and I knew so many ways of escaping punishment. I am
sure my family, my neighbors, my teachers in Polotzk--all
my world, in fact--strove together, by example and precept,
to teach me goodness. Saintliness had a new incarnation in
about every third person I knew. I did respect the saints,
but I could not help seeing that most of them were a little
bit stupid, and that mischief was much more fun than piety.
Goodness, as I had known it, was respectable, but not
necessarily admirable. The people I really admired, like my
Uncle Solomon, and Cousin Rachel, were those who preached the
least and laughed the most. My sister Frieda was perfectly
good, but she did not think the less of me because I played
tricks. What I loved in my friends was not inimitable. One
could be downright good if one really wanted to. One could be
learned if one had books and teachers. One could sing funny
songs and tell anecdotes if one traveled about and picked up
such things, like one's uncles and cousins. But a human being
strictly good, perfectly wise, and unfailingly valiant, all at
the same time, I had never heard or dreamed of. This wonderful
George Washington was as inimitable as he was irreproachable.
Even if I had never, never told a lie, I could not compare
myself to George Washington; for I was not brave--I was afraid
to go out when snowballs whizzed--and I could never be the
First President of the United States.

So I was forced to revise my own estimate of myself.
But the twin of my new-born humility, paradoxical as it may
seem, was a sense of dignity I had never known before. For if
I found that I was a person of small consequence, I discovered
at the same time that I was more nobly related than I had
ever supposed. I had relatives and friends who were notable
people by the old standards,--I had never been ashamed of my
family,--but this George Washington, who died long before I
was born, was like a king in greatness, and he and I were
Fellow Citizens. There was a great deal about Fellow Citizens
in the patriotic literature we read at this time; and I knew
from my father how he was a Citizen, through the process of
naturalization, and how I also was a citizen, by virtue of
my relation to him. Undoubtedly I was a Fellow Citizen, and
George Washington was another. It thrilled me to realize what
sudden greatness had fallen on me; and at the same time it
sobered me, as with a sense of responsibility. I strove to
conduct myself as befitted a Fellow Citizen.

Before books came into my life, I was given to
star-gazing and day-dreaming. When books were given me, I fell
upon them as a glutton pounces on his meat after a period
of enforced starvation. I lived with my nose in a book, and
took no notice of the alternations of the sun and stars. But
now, after the advent of George Washington and the American
Revolution, I began to dream again. I strayed on the common
after school instead of hurrying home to read. I hung on fence
rails, my pet book forgotten under my arm, and gazed off to
the yellow-streaked February sunset, and beyond, and beyond. I
was no longer the central figure of my dreams; the dry weeds
in the lane crackled beneath the tread of Heroes.

What more could America give a child? Ah, much more!
As I read how the patriots planned the Revolution, and the
women gave their sons to die in battle, and the heroes led
to victory, and the rejoicing people set up the Republic,
it dawned on me gradually what was meant by _my country_.
The people all desiring noble things, and striving for them
together, defying their oppressors, giving their lives for
each other--all this it was that made _my country_. It was
not a thing that I _understood_; I could not go home and tell
Frieda about it, as I told her other things I learned at
school. But I knew one could say "my country" and _feel_ it,
as one felt "God" or "myself." My teacher, my schoolmates,
Miss Dillingham, George Washington himself could not mean more
than I when they said "my country," after I had once felt
it. For the Country was for all the Citizens, and I _was a
Citizen_. And when we stood up to sing "America," I shouted
the words with all my might. I was in very earnest proclaiming
to the world my love for my newfound country.

"I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills."

Boston Harbor, Crescent Beach, Chelsea Square--all
was hallowed ground to me. As the day approached when the
school was to hold exercises in honor of Washington's
Birthday, the halls resounded at all hours with the strains
of patriotic songs; and I, who was a model of the attentive
pupil, more than once lost my place in the lesson as I
strained to hear, through closed doors, some neighboring class
rehearsing "The Star-Spangled Banner." If the doors happened
to open, and the chorus broke out unveiled--

"O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?"

delicious tremors ran up and down my spine, and I
was faint with suppressed enthusiasm.[66]

[66] Mary Antin: _The Promised Land_. Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston, publishers.

Write an account of any of the following processes _as
processes_.

1. The high school "star" learns in college that other bright
people exist.

2. The first realization of death.

3. Becoming loyal to a school.

4. Discovering pride of ancestry.

5. Finding that classical music is interesting.

6. A despised person becomes, on acquaintance, delightful.

7. Becoming reconciled to a new town, or system of government,
or catalogue system in a library.

8. Learning that not everything was discovered by an American.

9. Becoming aware that there is a life of thought.

10. Becoming reconciled to a great loss of money or friends.

11. Deciding upon a new wall-paper.

12. Fitting into the town circles after a year away at college.

13. Discovering that some beliefs of childhood must be abandoned.

14. Perceiving that you really agree with some one with whom you
have been violently squabbling.

15. The literary person finds attractiveness in engineering and
agriculture--and vice versa.

16. Working out a practical personal philosophy of life.

17. Finding a serious motive in life.

18. Determining upon a tactful approach to a "touchy" person.

19. Acquiring the college point of view in place of the
high-school attitude.

20. Discovering one's provincialism.

21. Discovering one's racial or national loyalty.

22. Finding out that the world does not depend on any individual,
but goes ahead, whether he lives or dies.