Chapter VI: Part 6

By shortening the forward section of the cylinder about
one-half, and consequently making the end blunter, the air
resistance was largely reduced; and, by turning the cylinder
around and running its sharp end forward, the air resistance
was almost doubled instead of being diminished. This
discovery came as a surprise, and completely upset all
preconceived ideas about the resistance of the air.

LAW SUCCUMBS TO WOMAN'S TONGUE.

ANOTHER TRIUMPH FOR THE SEX.

Curious Virginia Act Prescribed Ducking
for Loquacious Females, But Modern
Jurist Gives Up the Fight.

Are men less chivalrous to-day than they were two hundred years ago?

This is a question that is often asked nowadays, but the mass of evidence submitted is so conflicting that it is not likely to be answered until long after the present generation has passed away.

One thing is certain, however. In the present day man-made laws vouchsafe unto women far better opportunities for the speaking of their minds than they enjoyed two centuries ago. Here are two cases in point:

A law passed by the Grand Assembly held at James City,
Virginia, in March, 1662, was designed for the purpose of
trying to prevent women from talking to excess. The law
read:

"Whereas many babbling women slander and scandalize their
neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often involved
in chargeable and vexatious suits, and cast in great
damages: Be it therefore enacted that in actions of slander,
occasioned by the wife, after judgment passed for the
damages, the woman shall be punished by ducking; and if the
slander be so enormous as to be adjudged at greater damages
than five hundred pounds of tobacco, then the woman to
suffer a ducking for each five hundred pounds of tobacco
adjudged against the husband, if he refuses to pay the
tobacco."

In contrast with this is a solemn admission made by
Vice-Chancellor Stevenson, in Jersey City, last December.
The case was that of a man who besought the court to have
his wife restrained from going to his place of business
during business hours and demanding that he give her money.
The New Jersey jurist said:

"This man seeks to enjoin his wife's tongue. From time
immemorial men have tried to restrain woman's tongue, and
have failed."

The suit was dismissed.

CHESS KING RULES IN QUAINT GERMAN TOWN.

CHILDREN TAKE BOARDS TO SCHOOL

In No Other Part of the World Is the
Game Taken So Seriously as It
Is in Strohbeck.

The German town of Stroehbeck is ruled by two kings--one red and one white. Each has his queen and his attendant knights and bishops, his castles, and his--pawns. In other words, the game of chess is master in Stroehbeck.

It appears that in the year 1011 A.D. a certain Count Gunnelin was shut up in the tower prison at Stroehbeck, and, as there was nothing else to do, he chalked out a chess-board on the floor and made some rough pieces.

In time the jailer became interested in the count's maneuvers on the checkered field, and the two played together. The jailer ultimately taught the game to others, and it won a popularity which it has never lost in Stroehbeck. To quote the _Penny Magazine:_

Young and old, men and women, boys, girls, and almost
infants in arms play chess with a keenness and assiduity
that is something more than remarkable. Tiny tots learn the
moves upon the chess-boards and are taught the intricacies
of the game just as much as a matter of course as they are
taught their A B C, and some of them can play a game of
chess well enough to beat many an ordinary exponent of the
game before they can read.

Chess is taught in the schools, to which the pupils carry
chess-boards as the English school-child would carry his
satchel of books; and the pupils take a much deeper interest
in their chess lessons than any schoolboy in this country
has ever been known to take in any subject that was taught
him.

But it is not merely in school that chess is played in
Stroehbeck. Visit any local shop, and the shopman will lay
aside his chess-board in order to attend to your wants and
pick it up again the moment these are satisfied, to renew
his attentions to some problem or continue an exciting game
with his assistant. Even at the public-houses and places of
refreshment chess-boards and chess-men are provided, and
these are used by all and sundry.

Every home has its chess-board at which Darby and Joan while
away the winter evenings before the fire, or place it upon a
table in the garden in summer-time. In fact, chess is
familiar to every inhabitant from the time they leave the
cradle. Every one talks chess and thinks chess.

Chess-boards are everywhere. You may rest your elbow on one
while you sip your beer at an old-fashioned inn, which is
itself called "The Chess-Board," and there, if your quiet
and subdued manner makes you appear worthy of the honor, the
landlord will show you the set of chess-men presented to the
inhabitants in 1650.

Two princes played upon this board, and with these very
chess-men, he will tell you, and an inscription on the
chess-board itself confirms all the town's privileges, so
that one may say the very charter of the town is engrossed
upon a chess-board.

Every year a great chess tournament is held, for which every
one may enter. A large number of heats must first be played
off, the winners of which are entitled to enter for the
tournament. The competitors seek the distinction which will
be conferred upon them if they are adjudged the winner, and
do not set so much value on the prize itself, which
invariably takes the shape of a magnificent chess-board,
upon which are inscribed the words: "A reward for
application." This is presented by the municipality.

Chess enthusiasts in the United States have urged that the game be introduced into the public schools. Certainly it does afford an excellent mental discipline, though whether useful languages and sciences should be discarded in its favor may well be questioned.

STOUT STRATEGISTS OF THE REVOLUTION.

TAFTS AND SHAFTERS WERE MANY.

Washington Himself No Small Man, but
Several of His Officers Outweighed
Him by Scores of Pounds.

Great men were the officers who led the colonial forces during the War of the Revolution--great in patriotism, great in courage, great in patience, and great in size.

General Washington would pass in these days as a large man, but many of his officers outweighed him. Read, for example, the following statement, showing the weight of a number of American officers, as recorded at West Point on August 10, 1778:

General Washington 209 lbs.
General Lincoln 224 "
General Knox 280 "
General Huntingdon 182 "
General Greaton 166 "
Colonel Swift 319 "
Colonel Michael Jackson 252 "
Colonel Henry Jackson 238 "
Lieutenant-Colonel Huntingdon 212 "
Lieutenant-Colonel Cobb 182 "
Lieutenant-Colonel Humphreys 221 "

One might think that the scales used were the property of a dishonest grocer were it not for the proportion between Colonel Swift, say, and General Greaton. Or, perhaps, these officers were weighed in heavy accouterments. Certainly it is hard to think of most of them as traveling on horseback about country at the head of small forces whose chief resource was mobility.

HOW THE LUCY WALKER WAS BLOWN TO PIECES.

CREW FED THE FLAMES WITH FAT.

Steamboats Racing on the Mississippi
Before the Civil War Provided Strenuous
Experiences for All on Board.

Joe Vann, Cherokee Indian, who lived many years ago near Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, possessed five hundred slaves and thousands of acres of land. Some of his horses were fine racing stock, and he owned the Lucy Walker, the fastest steamboat on the Arkansas River. Vann was good to his slaves--open-hearted, generous; but he was an inveterate gambler. He lost and won large sums at horse-racing, and, indeed, he would not take a dare. The Fort Gibson _Post_ recalls as follows the tragic circumstances of this remarkable Cherokee's end:

While his steamboat had no rival for speed on the Arkansas
River, from its mouth at the Mississippi to Little Rock and
Fort Gibson, there were two or three rivals on the
Mississippi River, between St. Louis and New Orleans. One of
these boats, said to be the fastest on the river, attempted
to pass the Lucy Walker one day on the way down.

Vann had a crew of thirty negroes, said to have no superiors
on the river. He told the boys that the Lucy Walker must be
kept ahead, no matter at what cost. An allowance of grog was
given to each, and all promised to stand up to the work.

The rival boat was gaining on them; the usual fuel failed to
give sufficient speed. Vann went around and told the hands
to gather up everything that would burn. Tar and bacon were
thrown into the furnace, and soon the Lucy Walker was
forging ahead of her rival.

Timbers of the boat creaked and groaned; the furnace was red
hot; the boilers were seething and foaming; the heat was
terrific. The passengers, of whom there were about one
hundred and fifty, became alarmed; but Vann was cool as a
cucumber. He told his negro crew that they would beat the
rival boat or all go to Hades together, and they promised to
stand by him.

Then came an awful explosion, and nothing remained of the
Lucy Walker but scattered fragments. Most of the negro crew
were blown to atoms, about forty passengers were killed, and
nearly all the rest more or less injured. Vann's body was
found, horribly mangled.

YOUTHFUL ROMANCE OF THE QUAKER POET.

WHY WHITTIER NEVER MARRIED.

Story of His Affection for Miss Downing
and the Sudden and Unexplained
Break in Their Relations.

The article on "World-Famous Bachelors," in the April SCRAP BOOK, has led a New Jersey reader to call our attention to the early romance of John G. Whittier's life. Why Whittier remained a bachelor was not generally known until the death, at the age of eighty-five, of the only sweetheart he ever had--Elizabeth Bray Downing, of West Newbury, Massachusetts.

Whittier met Miss Downing at East Haverhill, Massachusetts,
when he was twenty years of age. They seem to have fallen in
love with each other very quickly, but it was not long
before they suddenly parted, for some reason never
explained. One rumor had it that the coming poet decided
that he could not marry because he had to provide for his
mother. However that may be, they rarely met thereafter, and
both remained unmarried.

About 1830 Whittier, then twenty-three years of age,
contributed to the _Courier_ of Northampton, Massachusetts,
a poem which is not to be found in any of his published
works. The verses, crude though they are, appear to throw
light on his parting from Miss Downing. The title is: "To
----, by John G. Whittier." We append a few of the stanzas:

I know that I have knelt too lowly
For smiles so oft withdrawn;
That trusting love received too slowly
The lesson of thy scorn;
That thou hast had thy triumph hour
Unquestioned and complete,
When prompted by a spell of power
I knelt me at thy feet.

'Tis over now; the charm is broken,
The feverish dream is fled;
And pass away like thoughts unspoken
The vows that I have said.
I give thee back thy plighted word;
Its tones of love shall be
Like music by the slumberer heard,
A dreamer's melody.

Go now, the light of hope is on thee,
Thy love claims are o'er.
A thousand smiles thy charms have won thee--
They'll win a thousand more;
For beauty hath a charming spell
Upon the human will--
Though false the heart it veils so well,
It hath its homage still.

* * * * *

Go, heartless girl, thou'lt smile to-morrow,
As I had never been,
And spurn thy lover's words of sorrow
For those of happier men.
A darker destiny the page
Of coming years may tell.
God help thee in thy pilgrimage!
Loved being, fare thee well!

WHERE SANTA CLAUS HAS HIS WORKSHOP.

AN OLD VILLAGE OF TOYMAKERS.

For Many Generations the Inhabitants of
St. Ulrich Have Fashioned Playthings
for the Children of All Nations.

Tourists, wandering out of the beaten tracks of their kind, occasionally come to a little village in Austria which presents the aspect of a corner of toyland.

The name of the village is St. Ulrich, and nearly all of its
inhabitants are toymakers. Each household, too, has its
specialty. One old woman has done nothing but carve wooden
cats, dogs, wolves, sheep, goats, and elephants.

She has made those six animals her whole life long, and she
has no idea of how to cut anything else. She makes them in
two sizes, and turns out as nearly as possible a thousand of
them a year.

She has no model or drawing of any kind to work by, but goes
on steadily, unerringly, using gages of different sizes and
shaping out her cats, dogs, wolves, sheep, goats, and
elephants with an ease and an amount of truth to nature
that would be clever if it were not utterly mechanical.

This woman learned from her mother how to carve those six
animals, and her mother had learned, in like manner, from
her grandmother. She has taught the art to her own
granddaughter, and so it may go on being transmitted for
generations.

DID YOU EVER TRY TO COUNT A BILLION?

EVEN METHUSELAH HAD NOT TIME.

It Is So Tremendous a Sum That a Conception
of It Can Hardly Be Formed
by the Human Mind.

When Americans talk about "a billion dollars" or a "billionaire" they think of a "billion" as one thousand millions. The word "billion" was originally used in France to denote a million of millions--or one million raised to the second power. At that time figures were pointed off in series of six by the French, and when the custom of pointing off by threes came into existence the French transferred the meaning of billion to one thousand millions.

Ordinarily, to-day, the French do not use the word "billion" at all, but refer to the sum of one thousand millions as a "milliard." In England "billion" means a million of millions--the more consistent meaning, in view of the origin of the word.

In the following attempt to make the meaning of a billion more vivid, the English billion, of course, is referred to.

What is a billion, or, rather, what conception can we form
of such a quantity? We may say that a billion is a million
of millions, and can easily represent it thus:
1,000,000,000,000. But a schoolboy's calculation will show
how entirely the mind is incapable of conceiving such
numbers.

If a person were able to count at the rate of two hundred in
a minute, and to work without intermission twelve hours in
the day, he would take to count a billion 6,944,444 days, or
19,325 years 319 days.

There are living creatures so minute that a hundred millions
of them might be comprehended in the space of a cubic inch.
They are supplied with organs and tissues, nourished by
circulating fluids, which must consist of parts or atoms, in
reckoning the size of which we must speak, not of billions,
but perchance of billions of billions.

And what is a billion of billions? The number is a
quadrillion, and can be easily represented thus:
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000; and the same schoolboy's
calculation may be employed to show that to count a
quadrillion at the rate of two hundred in the minute would
require all the inhabitants of the globe, supposing them to
be a thousand millions, to count incessantly for 19,025,875
years, or more than three thousand times the period during
which the human race has been supposed to be in existence.

These statistics are quoted from an old article by Professor Law, in _Jameson's Journal_.

THE AVERAGE AGES OF VARIOUS BIRDS.

FOUR LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS.

Those That Feed on Flesh Live Longer
Than Those Which Subsist Only on
Grains and Insects.

The doctrines of vegetarianism appear to be slightly shaken by the result of an investigation that an English authority has made into the subject of the longevity of birds. With one notable exception--the swan--the meat-feeding birds are the longest-lived.

The average ages of some of the best known birds are given
in the following table:

_Years_
Blackbird lives 12
Blackcap 15
Canary 24
Crane 24
Crow 100
Eagle 100
Fowl, common 10
Goldfinch 15
Goose 50
Heron 59
Lark 13
Linnet 23
Nightingale 18
Parrot 60
Partridge 15
Peacock 24
Pelican 50
Pheasant 15
Pigeon 20
Raven 100
Robin 12
Skylark 30
Sparrow Hawk 40
Swan 100
Thrush 10
Wren 3

The average age of the boarding-house variety of chicken is still undetermined.

INDEPENDENCE DAY RHYMES.

Words of the Poets Explain Why Hats Go Off While Flags Are Passing, Why
the Eagle Screams on "The Fourth," and How Young America Became
Identified With Sky-Rockets and Fire-Crackers.

ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

=By Lord Tennyson.=

[Signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.]

O Thou, that sendest out the man
To rule by land and sea,
Strong mother of a lion-line,
Be proud of these strong sons of thine
Who wrenched their rights from thee!

What wonder if in noble heat
Those men thine arms withstood,
Retaught the lesson thou had'st taught,
And in thy spirit with thee fought--
Who sprang from English blood.

But thou rejoice with liberal joy,
Lift up thy rocky face,
And shatter, when the storms are black,
In many a streaming torrent back,
The seas that shook thy base!

Whatever harmonies of law
The growing world assume,
Thy work is thine--the single note
From that deep chord which Hampden smote
Will vibrate to the doom.

THE FLAG GOES BY.

=By H.H. Bennett.=

Hats off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
A flash of color beneath the sky;
Hats off!
The flag is passing by.

Blue and crimson and white it shines
Over the steel-tipped ordered lines.
Hats off!
The colors before us fly;
But more than the flag is passing by.

Sea fights and land fights, grim and great,
Fought to make and to save the state;
Weary marches, and sinking ships;
Cheers of victory on dying lips.

Days of plenty and days of peace;
March of a strong land's swift increase;
Equal justice, right, and law,
Stately honor, and reverent awe.
Sign of a nation, great and strong
To ward her people from foreign wrong;
Pride and glory and honor, all
Live in the colors to stand or fall.

Hats off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;
And loyal hearts are beating high;
Hats off!
The flag is passing by!

_Youth's Companion._

INDEPENDENCE BELL.

=Anonymous.=

This poem, which has long been a favorite in school readers, describes the emotions of the people of Philadelphia on that memorable day in July, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed. It was resolved by Congress that the signing should be announced to the people by the ringing of the old Philadelphia State-house bell, now the most venerated relic of those stirring days. By a strange coincidence, the bell, cast years before the Declaration was dreamed of, bears the following inscription, from the Bible: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

There was tumult in the city,
In the quaint old Quakers' town,
And the streets were rife with people,
Pacing restless up and down--
People gathering at corners,
Where they whispered each to each,
And the sweat stood on their temples,
With the earnestness of speech.

As the bleak Atlantic currents
Lash the wild Newfoundland shore,
So they beat against the State-house,
So they surged against the door;
And the mingling of their voices
Made a harmony profound,
Till the quiet street of Chestnut
Was all turbulent with sound.

"Will they do it?" "Dare they do it?"
"Who is speaking?" "What's the news?"
"What of Adams?" "What of Sherman?"
"Oh, God grant they won't refuse!"
"Make some way there!" "Let me nearer!"
"I am stifling!" "Stifle, then!
When a nation's life's at hazard,
We've no time to think of men!"

So they beat against the portal,
Man and woman, maid and child;
And the July sun in heaven
On the scene looked down and smiled;
The same sun that saw the Spartan
Shed his patriot blood in vain,
Now beheld the soul of freedom
All unconquered rise again.

See! See! The dense crowd quivers
Throughout all its lengthy line,
As the boy beside the portal
Looks forth to give the sign!
With his small hands upward lifted,
Breezes dallying with his hair,
Hark! with deep, clear intonation,
Breaks his young voice on the air.

Hushed the people's swelling murmur,
List the boy's strong, joyous cry!
"_Ring!_" he shouts, "RING! _Grandpa_,
RING! OH, RING FOR LIBERTY!"
And straightway at the signal
The old bellman lifts his hand,
And sends the good news, making
Iron music through the land.

How they shouted! What rejoicing!
How the old bell shook the air,
Till the clang of freedom ruffled
The calm, gliding Delaware!
How the bonfires and the torches
Illumined the night's repose,
And from the flames, like Phoenix,
Fair Liberty arose!

THE REPUBLIC.

=By Henry W. Longfellow.=

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'Tis of the wave and not the rock;
'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore.
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee--are all with thee!

A PREJUDICE.

They say that we're short on a national song;
They're calling on genius to hustle
An' make up a piece that'll startle the throng
An' give the old-timers a tussle.
I reckon our folks must be clean out o' date--
That is, if we're jedged by the manner
In which we're accustomed to all congregate
A-singin' "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"Oh, long may it wave!" When we git to that part
There's somethin' more to it than singin'.
It's a prayer that devoutly goes forth from each heart
As the chorus is risin' and ringin'.
So mother an' me an' the gals an' the boys
Gathers 'round our old-fashioned pianner,
And whatever of talent each has he employs
A-singin' "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The source of the tune doesn't worry me none.
I never ask, "Where did they git it?"
It was destiny if, when the writin' got done,
The music was waitin' to fit it.
An' I feel that it echoes from sea unto sea
Whenever our youngest--that's Hanner--
Strikes a chord deep and full so's to give us the key,
An' we jine in "The Star-Spangled Banner."

_Washington Star._

NIGHT AND DEATH.

BY JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE.[B]

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! Creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst flow'r and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

[Footnote B: Joseph Blanco White became a lasting name in literature by virtue of fourteen lines. His sonnet to Night, sometimes known as "Night and Death," was spoken of by Coleridge as "the finest and most grandly conceived sonnet in our language." Leigh Hunt said of it that in point of thought it "stands supreme, perhaps, above all in any language; nor can we ponder it too deeply, or with too hopeful a reverence."

Yet White wrote nothing else that long outlived him. His genius was golden, but it seems to have been a pocket, not a vein; or shall we say that he compressed into a single sonnet the resources which another would have spread over many? At least we may thank him for this that he has left us.

A few words as to the man himself: He was born at Seville, Spain, July 11, 1775; was educated for the priesthood; went to England, where he entered the Established Church and gained the friendship of such men as Newman, Arnold, and Whately; became a Unitarian; and died at Liverpool, May 20, 1841. He wrote several books on religious questions. "To Death" appeared first in the _Bijou_, in 1828, and next in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ for May, 1835.]

The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

BY MATTHEW WHITE, JR.

A Series of Papers That Will Be Continued From Month to Month
and Include All the Most Prominent Players

MISS ADAMS'S INFANT ROLE.

Irritated by the Complaints of a Comedian,
Her Thespian Mother Offered Her as
a Substitute for a Property Baby.

The man who is responsible for Maude Adams's first appearance on the stage is now the prosperous proprietor of a wholesale liquor store in Salt Lake City. A jolly Englishman, his name is Phil Margetts, and at that time he was an actor, the popular comedian of the Salt Lake Theater, the biggest playhouse west of the Rockies, under the favored patronage of Brigham Young.

It was back in 1873, and Annie Adams was leading woman in the stock company maintained there. The daughter of one of the Utah pioneers, she had gone on the stage some eight years previous, and had not allowed her marriage to a business man, one James Kiskadden, to interfere with her career.

Maude was born on November 11, 1872, and as the family lived very close to the theater the child was practically brought up in the very odor of Thespianism.

On one occasion, according to John S. Lindsay in "The Mormons and the Theater," the regular bill of the evening was followed by the usual farce intended to send the people home in good humor. It was called "The Lost Child," and in it Margetts was cast for the father of the strayed or stolen infant. At the eleventh hour the comedian discovered to his disgust that he was expected to carry on the stage and fondle a rag doll instead of the real thing.

"But I thought you were going to provide me with a flesh-and-blood baby," he indignantly demanded of Millard, the property man.

"I tried to, Phil," replied this long-suffering individual, "but, honest, I couldn't get one. Nobody wanted to let her baby out of her arms, even for a minute."

"Ye gods!" exclaimed Margetts. "Not a baby to be had in the Mormon capital!"

Time was pressing, and he appealed to Mr. Caine, the stage manager. The two were still wrangling over the matter when Mrs. Kiskadden almost literally threw nine-months-old Maude into the breach.

It was in San Francisco, some five years later, that the little girl "walked" on for the first time. This was with J.K. Emmet, in the old Bush Street Theater, as _Little Schneider_ in one of his "Fritz" plays. Her mother was a member of the company, but her father did not altogether approve of Maude's histrionic attempts. They were speaking of the matter at the dinner-table one day, and Mr. Kiskadden remarked to his wife:

"I won't have the child making a fool of herself."

Whereupon Maude, whom they had both supposed to be too busy with her knife and fork to be paying any attention to the talk, broke in with:

"I'll not make a fool of myself, papa."

She had her way, and continued to act at intervals in companies where her mother was employed, until she was sent to school, which she left to take up her career again around 1888, when she was in her middle 'teens.

One of her child engagements in San Francisco found her in a play called "Chums," at the Baldwin. This was the work of David Belasco, who had risen at the theater from call-boy to stage manager and dramatist. The piece, which afterward became famous under the name "Hearts of Oak," had in its cast at the time James O'Neill, Lewis Morrison, and James A. Herne. Belasco called the heroine _Chrystal_ (a name used later by Herne for his own daughter, now leading woman with Arnold Daly), and Maude Adams was little _Chrystal_.

Miss Adams passed from schoolgirl to school mistress in a play, Hoyt's "A Midnight Bell," which was a great success at the Bijou Theater in New York. Here Charles Frohman saw her work, and liked it so much that he engaged her for the ingenue in his first stock company, then lodged at Proctor's Twenty-Third Street Theater.

This was in the autumn of 1890, and Miss Adams's first appearance under the Frohman regime was made in William Gillette's comedy-farce, "All the Comforts of Home," in which she was cast as _Evangeline Bender_, daughter of a retired produce dealer. Henry Miller led the list of players, which was facetiously headed "Who's In It?"

The same jocose spirit prompted the further elucidations of the details in the evening's entertainment on the house bill in this wise:

WHERE IS IT?

Drawing-room of a private house in London.

WHEN IS IT?

Now.

WHAT TIME IS IT?

Act 1. A morning.
Act 2. A few mornings later.
Act 3. Another morning.
Act 4. The same morning.
(Good morning.)

Was Stronger Than the Play.

In the same year, 1890, Miss Adams appeared at the same theater, in what was styled its regular season, opening on October 21 as _Dora Prescott_, another ingenue role, in De Mille and Belasco's "Men and Women." This was followed in the fall of 1891, also at Proctor's, by De Mille's play from the German, "The Lost Paradise," in which Miss Adams was cast for the lame mill-girl, _Nell_.

This Henry C. De Mille, it may be remarked in passing, was the father of the W.C. De Mille who wrote "Strongheart" for Robert Edeson, and who is an instructor in the Empire School of Acting, sometimes known as the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

In the spring of 1892 John Drew left Daly's, whereupon Charles Frohman decided to make him his first star, and he chose Maude Adams to be his leading woman. It is now an old story--the hit she instantly made as the wife who assumes intoxication in a crisis of the Clyde Fitch comedy from the French, "The Masked Ball."

That it was the actress and not the part that triumphed was proved by the falling down of the piece when it was tried some few years since, under supposedly favorable auspices in London.

Miss Adams was at once established as a metropolitan favorite of the first water. The play ran as long as time could be secured for it at Wallack's (then known as Palmer's), and was removed to the Manhattan (then the Standard), where it finished out the season.

She continued with Drew for five years, and became a star in "The Little Minister" in the fall of 1897, with Robert Edeson for her first leading man.

HACKETT'S EARLY DREAM.

It Came True When He Saw His
Name in Letters of Fire in Front
of a Broadway Theater.

The line now appearing on the programs at Fields's Theater, "Mr. Hackett, Sole Lessee and Manager," practically inaugurates in New York the policy that has so long been current in London--that of actor-managership. To be sure, it is not James K. Hackett's present intention to appear himself on the stage at Fields's, but it is not unlikely that before snow flies again he may have another house nearer the Broadway line and which will bear his name, as it is his plan to reserve Fields's for farces like "Mr. Hopkinson" and light musical offerings.

Speaking of his name over a theater recalls a remark he made to me something like half a score of years ago. We had been dining together at the Players and were riding up-town on a Broadway car in the direction of the Broadway Theater, where Hackett was then doing _De Neipperg_ with Kathryn Kidder in "Madame Sans Gene." The electric sign had recently come into existence, and as we were passing what is now the Princess's, but was then known as "Herrman's," the car was flooded with a glow from the brilliant lettering proclaiming that So-and-So (some star whose name now slips my memory) was appearing there.

Hackett clutched my arm.

"See that!" he exclaimed. "One day you will read my name in similar letters of fire!"

Then he aspired only to stardom, little recking that he was to become a manager as well. But he has a foundation, broad and deep, behind him. His father was the J.H. Hackett whose _Falstaff_ was so inimitable that it came to be associated with him almost in the guise of a Christian name. His mother--and a more devoted parent never lived--was also once on the boards.

James K. was born amid the swirling waters of the St. Lawrence, on Wolfe Island, Ontario, his father being almost seventy at the time.

The late Recorder Hackett, of New York, was a half-brother of the present actor-manager. James has no recollection of his father, as he was scarcely two years old when he died. His mother has been his guardian angel since birth. She brought him up in New York City, with the idea that law should be his life vocation; but from the age of seven, when he recited Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" in public, amateur theatricals played a big part in his aspirations. He was in the class of '91 of the College of the City of New York, and when he was about nineteen I remember seeing him at the Berkeley Lyceum, in a representation by the college dramatic club, as "_Joseph Pickle_, inclined to mischief," in "The Pink Mask."

It was his experience in performances like this that helped him to make his start when he finally decided--as such a throng have done before him--to abandon law in favor of the footlights. He began on March 28, 1892, in Philadelphia, with A.M. Palmer's company, then presenting "The Broken Seal." He had only six lines to speak, but the very next week J.H. Stoddart gave him an opening for something better, as he once gave Mansfield, though under altogether different circumstances.

Mrs. Stoddart died suddenly, and during his absence from the company his part of _Jean Torquerie_ was entrusted to young Hackett, who acquitted himself so well therein that he was enabled to obtain a post with Lotta as her leading man. Lotta's retirement threw him on the market, from which he was removed by no less distinguished a manager than Augustin Daly.

At Daly's then he appeared as _Master Wilford_ in "The Hunchback," with Ada Rehan as _Julia_, Isabel Irving (whom Hackett has since starred in "The Crisis") as _Helen_, and Arthur Bourchier (now a leading actor-manager of London, and who created the part Hackett played here in "The Walls of Jericho") as _Sir Thomas Clifford_.

From Daly's he passed to the road under the management of Arthur Rehan as leading man in successes from Daly's, which led to his becoming a star in the same modest orbit in a repertoire of old-timers such as "Mixed Pickles" (on which his amateur venture, "The Pink Mask," had been based), "The Arabian Nights," and "The Private Secretary."

He was lifted into the prominence imparted by a Broadway run through the agency of "Madame Sans Gene," in which Dan Frohman saw him, with the result that in November, 1895, he appeared with the old Lyceum stock company as a character next in importance to Herbert Kelcey, then leading man of the troupe. The play was a serious one, "The Home Secretary," by R.C. Carton, who had not then taken such wild farcical flights as "Mr. Hopkinson."

It was just at this time that Mr. Frohman decided to try rather an odd experiment. As had been his custom, E.H. Sothern had opened the autumn season at the Lyceum, and this year with even more than his wonted success, for he had appeared in the first transfer to the stage of "The Prisoner of Zenda." Previous bookings compelled his relegation to the road in the very height of the New York hit, and in mid-winter, after sizing up his new acquisition to the stock forces, Mr. Frohman decided to duplicate the outfittings of "The Prisoner of Zenda" and put it on at the Lyceum with Hackett in the dual part of _Rassendyll_ and the king.

What Kelcey thought of this arrangement has never been made public. But he was temperamentally unsuited to romantic roles, and did admirable work in the heavier part of _Black Michael_, with the explanatory line "by special arrangement" beneath his name on the program.

This was Hackett's opportunity, and he availed himself of it to the full, winning the Lyceum clientage for his firm adherents, so that when Kelcey went starring the next autumn with Effie Shannon he stepped into the shoes of the leading man of the house. In the opening bill, "The Courtship of Leonie," he met for the first time the new leading woman, Mary Mannering, who in due course became his wife.

It was two years later that Mr. Frohman launched Hackett as a star in the "Prisoner of Zenda's" sequel, "Rupert of Hentzau," which had no Broadway showing. Its successor, "The Pride of Jennico," made up for this by setting Hackett on a pedestal so firmly rooted in public favor that in a year or so he became his own manager, and his youthful dream was fulfilled.

THE ROAD TO "HAPPYLAND."

After Becoming Stage-Struck, Marguerite
Clark Began Her Professional Career
as a Singer in a Baltimore Park.

"Stage-struck" is the cause that sent to the boards Marguerite Clark, the little leading woman of the big comedian, De Wolf Hopper. A native of Boston, she studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, but had no stage acquaintances and no means of securing an opening.

One evening, however, she was singing at a friend's house, when there chanced to be among the guests the manager of an open-air resort in the neighborhood of Baltimore. It was, in brief, one of those parks at the end of a trolley line, which the street railway company promotes in order to boom traffic. Struck by Miss Clark's capabilities, and learning of her histrionic ambitions, he offered her an engagement for the summer, which she was only too glad to accept. In this rather humble way, then, she made her start, singing before such heterogeneous crowds as the trolley emptied into the park from all quarters of the Monumental City.

When frost set in there was, of course, an end to the engagement, but little Miss Clark had no thought of quitting the game. She came on to New York, and began a systematic tour of the agencies and the managers' offices, and finally she landed an engagement with the chorus of Sousa's opera, "The Bride-Elect." From this she passed to the Casino, when Irene Bentley was appearing there in "The Belle of Bohemia." She was now entrusted with her first part, which secured her an opening with Hopper in "Mr. Pickwick." In this she was Sam Weller's sweetheart _Polly_. One of the critics said of her:

"Marguerite Clark is a most cunning and comely little girl--pretty enough to rave about--and many amusing miles away from the Dickens picture."

"Mr. Pickwick," by the way, will probably turn out to be the last musical play that Charles Klein will write. Since the abounding success of "The Music Master" and "The Lion and the Mouse," the so-called legitimate field will doubtless claim all his time.

To return to Miss Clark, when Hopper revived "Wang," she was cast for _Mataya_ on account of her size, but was so afraid to come into New York with it that for that period she went to Boston and appeared in "The Babes in the Wood."

ORATORY STARTED CHAPIN.

The Prosy Addresses of Fourth-of-July
Speakers Goaded Him On to the
Study of Declamation.

"It was _not_ because I happened to have long legs that I decided to put myself as Abraham Lincoln into a play."

So said Benjamin Chapin when I approached him with a request to talk a bit for the benefit of THE SCRAP BOOK readers.

And when I saw the man out of character I could not blame him for being a little ruffled at the persistent press talk about his doing the Lincoln play because he looked like the famous President. I had gone so far into this belief myself that I was distinctly amazed when the door opened to admit a young man, one not much more than thirty, I should say. The face is long, to be sure, and the frame loose-jointed, but Mr. Chapin's features blend into rather an attractive composite, and Mr. Lincoln, as everybody knows, never laid any claims to good looks.

"Why did I elect to do Lincoln, then?" Mr. Chapin went on. "Because it was the hardest thing of any to do. Any man with the proper amount of ambition in him likes to tackle and overcome difficulties, and in placing our first martyred President on the stage I realized to the full how carefully I must work to keep from falling into pits that would open up on every side of me. But you want to know how I came to go into this line of work at the very beginning, don't you?

"Let me see! I should say the foundations were laid when I was a small boy of ten--out in my native State of Ohio. I used to listen to the Fourth-of-July orators talk on in their prosy way, in a dull monotone, and on Sundays the preachers would speak in the same dismal manner.

"'Why don't they convince the people that they are in earnest?' I would say to myself"--and Mr. Chapin let out his voice in a fashion that made the rafters of the small room ring. "That's the way I felt about the power of the voice even at that early era.

"One summer we were having a picnic--I think it was a Sunday-school affair. Anyhow, there were to be speeches by the boys and girls out in the woods. I wouldn't rehearse mine. You see, I had made up my mine[TN mind] to surprise folks. Nobody had ever heard me speak before, and here was the chance to live up to my own theories.

"What my selection was I cannot just recall. I think it was one of Will Carleton's descriptive ballads. Anyway, I let myself out on it in a fashion that made everybody gasp with wonder. And so the thing began. I knew then that my life-work must be something in which I could appeal to the public through the medium of the voice.

"I thought of law for a while, then had a hankering after politics. Finally I drifted into the line of impersonations through monologues.

"I have been working on the drama of 'Lincoln' for years. The version I am doing is by no means the only one I have written around the war-time President, but it seemed to be the one, all things considered, best adapted for the stage."

For the past half-dozen years Mr. Chapin has been all over the country on the lecture platform, but he has by no means confined himself to Lincoln. He has impersonated, among others, Rip Van Winkle and Cyrano de Bergerac. He has great ambitions in the direction of playwriting.

"I have discovered," he told me in this connection, "that if a play does not elicit from its audience over two hundred distinct expressions of approval, in the shape either of laughs, applause, or that almost imperceptible stir of expectancy, it is a failure."

WELFORD MIXED WRITS.

If the English Actor Had Been Less
Careless as a Law Clerk, He Would
Not Have Been "Mr. Hopkinson."

When the year 1906 began, American playgoers had never heard of an actor by the name of Dallas Welford. Before Easter all New York was applauding his work as the unconscionable little bounder in the title role of R.C. Carton's English farce, "Mr. Hopkinson."

In order to obtain for THE SCRAP BOOK some facts, at first hand, concerning his early life, I interviewed him in his dressing-room one afternoon after a matinee. And dressing, with him, is a very simple process, as he uses no make-up at all, and consequently does not have to give his face a bath of cold cream after the play in order to take the grease-paint off.

In fact, so simple are his preparations for the street that he once went out to dinner with a friend forgetting to remove the tiny false mustache which is all the concession to the mummer's mask he makes in fitting himself to the character of the Cockney tradesman who has come into money.

"How did I start?" he said, in answer to my query. "Well, you see, in one sense I did not need an introduction to the stage, or what you call 'pull,' because my mother was an actress, and as a kid I went on in the inevitable way as the _Duke of York_ in 'Richard III,' besides being the perennial _Little Willie_ in 'East Lynne.'

"I remember, too, that I was the child in your 'Danites' when it was done over on our side. But my mother did not want me to stick to the boards. She thought I wasn't adapted to make a success of it, and when I had had my bit of schooling she put me in a solicitor's office, or 'lawyer's,' as you call 'em over here.

"Well"--and he laughed at the recollection called up--"I lasted there just a week. You see, when I was sent out with writs to deliver, I used to serve the originals and keep the copies. You can believe there was some lively goings-on in that office when the boss found this out.

"He didn't enter any objections at all to my taking up a stage career--oh, no, not in the least! But my mother did, so I just went out and hunted up a job--any old thing, as a starter, so long as I once got my foot inside the stage door again.

"Where I landed finally was in a melodrama of 'The Glazier's Bride' type. I believe I was a luggage carrier, or some such modest adjunct to the proceedings. You see, it's easier to get your start in melodrama, because there are more people in a play like that, and there are sure to be parts for 'freshies' such as I was then. In comedy, the line I wanted, the least you can be is a butler or footman, and you know in some farces the butler comes pretty near being as important as the leading man.

"So while I was learning the ropes I stayed in the _'penny dreadful'_ kind of play, gradually working my way up. This lasted for about five years [Mr. Welford has been on the stage seventeen, being in the neighborhood of thirty], when finally I got my chance in comedy in a play from your side, 'My Friend the Prince,' done over here--some of the time by Willie Collier--as 'My Friend from India.' Yes, I was the chap disguised as the East Indian who does the trick with the mirror. I have stayed in comedy ever since."

In London, James Welch, the creator of _Mr. Hopkinson_, has been in quite hard luck since the long run ceased, two new ventures having turned out failures.

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related
that it is difficult to class them separately. One step
above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above
the ridiculous makes the sublime again.--=Thomas Paine=.

LORD BYRON'S RIDDLE.

A Curious Poetic Creation That Has Puzzled Many Readers, and a
Solution of the Mystery.

In the earlier history of man the riddle was an important intellectual test. To be able to guess hard riddles was supposed to indicate wisdom, and often a great deal was made to depend upon the issue of a guessing contest. The most famous riddle of antiquity was the one which the Sphinx is said to have proposed to Oedipus: "What is that which has four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three at night?" And it has been asserted that Homer died of vexation because he could not find an answer to the riddle: "What we caught we threw away, what we could not catch we kept."

The riddle is the result of the perception of analogies. Note your analogy and put it in the form of a question, and you have your riddle. The conundrum, which has largely replaced the riddle, is a pun concerning which a question is asked. The conundrum may be witty; the riddle may be broadly humorous--and, indeed, it is probably the earliest form of humor.

Among modern riddles, this of Lord Byron's once puzzled many people. The appended "solution" appeared years ago in the Essex (Massachusetts) _Register_.

THE RIDDLE.

I'm not in youth, nor in manhood, nor age,
But in infancy ever am known;
I'm a stranger alike to the fool and the sage,
And though I'm distinguished in history's page,
I always am greatest alone.

I'm not in the earth, nor the sun, nor the moon,
You may search all the sky--I'm not there;
In the morning and evening--tho' not in the noon,
You may plainly perceive me, for like a balloon,
I am midway suspended in air.

I am always in riches and yet I am told,
Wealth did ne'er my presence desire;
I dwell with the miser, but not with his gold,
And sometimes I stand in the chimney so cold,
Though I serve as a part of the fire.

I often am met in political life--
In my absence no kingdom can be;
And they say there can neither be friendship nor strife,
No one can live single, no one take a wife,
Without interfering with me.

My brethren are many, and of my whole race,
No one is more slender and tall;
And though not the eldest, I hold the first place,
And even in dishonor, despair, and disgrace,
I boldly appear 'mong them all.

Though disease may possess me, and sickness and pain,
I am never in sorrow or gloom;
Though in wit and wisdom I equally reign,
I'm the heart of sin, and have long lived in vain,
And I ne'er shall be found in the tomb!

SOLUTION.

From the Essex (Massachusetts) "Register."

Lord Byron, your riddle is dark, I confess,
But dark as it is, I will venture to guess.

Though 'tis found not in youth, nor in manhood, nor age,
Though a stranger alike to the fool and the sage,
Though earth don't contain it, the sun nor the moon.
Though in darkness 'tis absent, and also in noon;
Though 'tis not found in searching the heavens sublime;
Yet by guessing, I think I shall guess it in time.

If disease must possess it, and sickness and pain,
If suspended in air and has long lived in vain,
If in sin you can find it, I will not deny,
As you are freed from it, it must then be =I=.

How "Yankee Doodle Came to Town."

The Famous Air Had a Checkered Career and Hobnobbed With Some
Queer Lyrics Before a British Surgeon Unwittingly Gave to
the American Patriots a Battle Song.

_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

Our oldest national nickname is "Yankee." In the early Colonial days, the Indians stumbling over the pronunciation of the language of the pale-face, called the English "Yenghies." By corruption, "Yenghies" became "Yanghies" and "Yankees." The settlers took the word "Yankees" back again from their copper-skinned neighbors, and they seem to have used it in a slangy way.

As early as 1713 Jonathan Hastings, a farmer of Cambridge, in New England, used the word as a synonym for excellence, saying of anything which he especially admired:

"It is Yankee good"--that is, probably: "It is as good as if English made."

However, it is worthy of note that Jamieson's "Scottish Dictionary" gives a Scottish word, "Yankie," with the definition: "A sharp, clever woman, at the same time including an idea of forwardness."

The modern notion of Yankee shrewdness might seem to justify the derivation from the Scottish, but, as it happens, the Yankee was not generally considered shrewd and clever until a much later period than the pre-Revolutionary days.