fields. A doubt may be entertained, however, as to whether these fields can be successfully occupied by any other than Barrie's peculiar genius-the genius, claims the London Outlook, of one who is still a boy at forty-five. Says the same paper:

"Not once in a century does the star dance and Queen Mab stand godmother to an earth-born child, tho now and then some dull moralist will lay a false claim to these honors. Every child who really receives them is

A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay;

but of all those few none has found the world so ready to be waylaid and to join in the fun as Barrie. Queen Mab has been very kind to him. She has taught him all the trickiness of a good fairy. with none of the spitefulness of a bad fairy he is full of the French malice and has no spark of the English malice. And so the wise ones among the grown-ups, judging him by none of their own standards, let him play with them as he will, and love him for it."

WHISTLER AND WATTS CONTRASTED.

LONDON'S art exhibitions of the past winter have led Mr.

Roger E. Fry to comment, in The Quarterly Review, on the individualism of the English masters. The characteristics of a nation with a hundred creeds and only one sauce make themselves felt even in our art." In illustration he compares Watts and Whistler, each, he says, "in some ways typical of English art,” yet remarkable for their “extraordinary unlikeness." For Watts, art was an organic part of human life, affected by its conditions and expressive of its needs." Whistler, on the other hand, "asserted the unique nature of the sense of beauty, its uselessness, its separation from all other human faculties, and its supreme claims.” If there be such a thing as a religion of beauty, says Mr. Fry, Whistler was its hierophant. In further characterization we read : "Whistler, the pamphleteer, the journalist, the dandy, the pugnacious litigant, was always in evidence. One might have supposed then that here at least was the man who, loving publicity and the stir of city life, would have been able to say, in a sparkling and witty idiom of his own, something about life. Even if he had not interpreted its deeper significance, we might have expected from him some close and convincing statement of its fashions and its follies. But no artist ever shrank from life more than Whistler. No one approached it with more haughty and self-contained reserve. He was never really on terms with life; his keen intelligence made him alert to detect fallacies in the proverbial philosophies of his day, and his corrosive wit made his exposure of them bitterly resented. He became a negative Mephistophelian figure; his geniality shriveled, his sympathies were crushed both from within and from without. But the very fastidiousness of taste, both intellectual and esthetic, which thus set him in opposition to life prevented him from giving vent, as a Swift or Carlyle, to the rage of his heart. The fire burned within him, but he spoke only ephemeral witticisms in the press; he never painted the satires that he conceived; for the root of all his quarrel with life lay in the one really deep emotion he possessed-the love of pure beauty.

'His theory, then, that the esthetic emotion is entirely distinct and self-sufficient, made it a point of honor for him to eliminate from his painting all that indignation with a gross generation which might conceivably have inspired in him an art of terrible denunciation like Daumier's. His fiery and militant spirit concentrated itself on the perfection of beauty, on the search for it in its purest aspects, where its elements could be seized apart from any possible meanings they might connote. He made almost a fetish of the artistic conscience. His negations and exclusions became more and more exacting, his points of contact with life rarer. He realized taste in its highest development. For its perfection it required a scrupulosity and ascesis which made it analogous to moral purity. He carried it about with him as a prophylactic against the contaminations of a vulgar age; he lived by it as a religious by his rule; he almost sank the genius in the man of taste." And again:

"Whistler stands alone untouched by the imitations of life, pro

testing that beauty exists apart, that the work of man's hands is fairer than all that nature can show. He is a monument to the power of the artist's creed in its narrowest interpretations, and to the unbending rectitude of the artistic conscience, a lonely, scarcely a lovable, but surely an heroic figure."

Watts, says the writer, "presents at almost every point the completest contrast to Whistler." Of Watts we read further:

"He clung always with a genial pertinacity to what was hopeful and elevating. He was positive and generous where Whistler was negative and cynical. His easily kindled enthusiasm for what was noble silenced the critical and discriminating faculties of the intellect. Where Whistler was moved to scornful indignation by the hasty assumptions of a superficial and facile philosophy, by the easy-going generalizations which were current at the time, Watts's imagination responded with glowing enthusiasm. To his genial, assimilative nature the harsh abstraction of Whistler's artistic Calvinism, with its insistence on perfection, had no meaning. For him perfection, as the result of deliberate and critical choice, of rejection and exclusion, had no attractions. He created by inclusion and absorption, by identifying himself with some great and elevating idea which gathered to itself, as it grew, what was necessary to its sustenance, careless even if it included some accidental and unnecessary accretions.

"We are not, then, to look to Watts for perfection; each picture of his was a struggle to express some idea which stirred his emotions. He was bound to be experimental and tentative in his efforts to find for this the expressive symbol. And the very importance of the ideas to him, the high duty which he believed lay upon him to utter them to the world, prevented him from a curious preoccupation with the mode of their embodiment."

Yet Watts," almost alone of English artists, . . . has attempted the grand style, and on its highest plane." His spirit," says Mr. Fry," moved at ease in a large orbit; his ears were attuned to majestic strains; he had to be grandiose or nothing." In Mr. Fry's opinion the great mystery of Watts's work is that “in an age of exasperating and nervous activity, greeted on all sides by the jerky briskness of the modern man," he succeeded in expressing himself in the grand style at all.

As to Watts's future position among the world's great artists, Mr. Fry finds it far more difficult to prophesy than in the case of Whistler. The latter "accomplished something which had never been done before, accomplished it finally and definitively." But Watts "calls up perpetually the memory of the greatest creators, of Michelangelo, of Titian, of Rubens; and, if we are perfectly frank, his work will not quite stand the test thus inevitably applied."

Foreign Books in Russia.—According to the St. Petersburg Novoye Vremya, the Kobeko commission on press reforms, after thoroughly considering the question of censorship as applied to native books, turned its attention to the proper treatment of imported books in foreign languages, and found that the situation in that respect was even more anomalous and chaotic than with regard to the national literary output. Russia is the country of translations par excellence. She reads and devours everything, and American or German or Italian or Dutch books that are hardly known in their own respective countries are promptly translated and read by her "intelligencia." Her magazines are full of translated fiction from English, French, and other sources. In view of these facts the duties of the censors have not been light, and they have fallen into many ludicrous blunders and paradoxes. Thus many books which one department permitted in translations another prohibited in the original, and while a man might be punished for selling or possessing a given French book, there was nothing to prevent him from selling or buying the same book in a Russian translation. The official report submitted to the commission showed, says the paper referred to, that in the years 1871-99 ten thousand foreign books were prohibited by the censors, and these books included all forms of literature. There has never been any revision of this" index," and the Minister of the Interior has offered

to examine the whole list and remove the ban from at least twothirds of the number. With regard to the future, he proposed to abolish the censorship as to all scientific books in foreign languages, including books on politics, social science, and economics, while retaining it with reference to fiction, poetry, plays, and "popular" literature generally. The liberal members of the commission regarded these proposals as inadequate, and advocated greater freedom and less "distrust of books," tho they be written in other languages.-Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

FITZGERALD CLASSED AS AN AMATEUR.

MR. ARTHUR C. BENSON, the author of the life of Ed

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ward FitzGerald that has just been added to the English Men of Letters Series, finds it no easy matter to define FitzGerald's position with regard to the literary tradition of the age. Notwithstanding the fact that the "Omar" is a piece of absolutely firstrate work, its author can not be said to have affected the stream of English poetry very deeply." Even the language of the poems, says Mr. Benson, "stately and beautiful as it is, has no modernity about it; it is not a development, but a reverting to older traditions, a memorable graft, so to speak, of a bygone style." And so the finding is that the author-for such translation justifies the word-of one of the most widely known volumes of verse in the English language, is best described as an "amateur." Says Mr. Benson:

FitzGerald's position with regard to the poetry that was rising and swelling about him is that of a stranded boat on a lee shore. He could not bring himself into line with modern verse at all; he had none of the nineteenth-century spirit. Yet he is in the forefront of those who, standing apart from the direct current of the time, seem destined to make the Victorian age furnish a singularly rich anthology of beautiful poetry. How many poets there are in the last century whose work does not entitle them to be called great poets, who yet have produced a very little of the best quality of poetry. The same is singularly true of the Elizabethan age, which produced not only great poets, but a large number of poetasters whose work rises in a few lyrics into the very front rank.

"With FitzGerald it may be plainly said that, with the exception of 'Omar' and 'The Meadows in Spring,' all the rest of his deliberate work in verse is second-rate, the product of a gifted and accomplished amateur."

But in prose there still remain the wonderful letters; and these have a high value, both for their beautiful and original literary form, for the careless picture they give of a certain type of retired and refined country life, for their unconsidered glimpses of great personalities, and for the fact that they present a very peculiar and interesting point of view, a delicate criticism of life from a highly original standpoint. The melancholy which underlies the letters is not a practical or inspiring thing, but it is essentially true; and it carries with it a sad refinement, a temperate waiting upon the issues of life; a sober resignation, which are pure and noble. FitzGerald, by his lover like tenderness of heart, his wistful desire to clasp hands with life, was enabled to resist the temptation, apt to beset similar temperaments, to sink into a dreary silence about the whole unhappy business. And thus there emerges a certain gentle and pathetic philosophy, not a philosophy for the brisk, the eager, and the successful, but a philosophy for all who find their own defects of character too strong for them, and yet would not willingly collapse into petulant bitterness. FitzGerald is a sort of sedate Hamlet; the madness that wrought in his brain does not emerge in loud railings, or in tempestuous and brief agonies of desperate action; but it emerges in many gentle gestures and pathetic

ness.

beckonings, and a tender desire, in a world where so much is dark, that men should cling all together and float into the darkThere are many who can not believe and can not act-and for these, as for FitzGerald, it seems best to hold fast to all that is dear and beautiful. To such as these FitzGerald speaks heart to heart; and after all, no gifts of style, no brisk technique, can ever take the place of that closeness of fellowship, which seems to be the only human power that may perhaps defy even death.

...

Given the shy and sensitive temperament, the acute and skeptical mind, the indolent disposition of FitzGerald, and the ample competence which he enjoyed, and the resultant was bound to be what it was. He was too sensitive to take his ambitions into the arena, too indolent to submit his kindly impulses to an organized system of philanthropy; too uncertain to preach a faith which he could not hold. But it may be questioned whether the primal law which seems to indicate labor as a condition of bodily and mental equilibrium can ever be quite successfully evaded. FitzGerald felt the need of organized work in his own life, but the pressure was never strong enough to induce him to submit himself to uneasy conditions."

Summarizing his subject's qualities and attempting to strike balance therefrom the biographer writes:

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á

He had a great tenderness for worthless little books, if they only revealed some gentle and delicate trait of character, somesmall piece of wistful individuality. A great conception, a broad and vigorous motive, often bewildered and stupefied him. Hisidea of the paradise of art was as of a place where you could wander quietly about picking a flower here and there, catching a little effect, watching a pretty grouping of trees and water, the sunlight on a grassy bank or a gable-end. He lived and thought in a series of glimpses and vistas, but the plan of the place, its avenues and terraces, was unregarded by him. And thus there was a want of centrality, of combination, of breadth, about his mind. Art was to him not an impassioned quest, but a leisurely wandering in search of charm, of color, of subtle impressions. .

After all, the process of estimating the character even of the best of men must be of the nature of addition and subtraction. It is the final note that is our main concern. In FitzGerald's case, on the debit side of the account stand a certain childishness of disposition, indolence, a weak sentimentality, a slackness of moral fiber, a deep-seated infirmity of purpose. These may be partly condoned by an inherited eccentricity. On the credit side stand a true loyalty of nature, an unobtrusive generosity, a real love of humanity, a moral clear-sightedness, an acute perception of beauty, a literary gift that at its best was of the nature of genius. There can be little question on which side the balance lies. We may regret the want of strenuousness, the over-developed sensibility which led him to live constantly in the, pathos of the past, the pain of the contemplation of perishable sweetness. But we may be thankful for so simple, so tender-hearted, so ingenuous a life; we may feel that the long quiet years were not misspent which produced, if so rarely, the delicate flowers of genius. To enrich the world with one imperishable poem, to make music of some of the saddest doubts that haunt the mind of man-that is what many far busier and more concentrated lives fail to do. To strew the threshold of the abyss with flowers, to dart an ethereal gleam into the encircling gloom, to set a garland of roses in the very shrine of death, to touch despair with beauty-this is to bear a part in the work of consoling men, of reconciling fate, of enlightening doom, of interpreting the vast and awful mind of God. Truth itself can do no more than hint at the larger hope-'It is He that hath made us.

Is There No Standard for Short Stories?-The differences of critical opinion in regard to " Fagan," the winner of the $5,000 prize in the short-story competition instituted by Collier's Weekly, leads The Argonaut (San Francisco) to the conclusion that "there is no standard of excellence for short stories, and there never will be." While three of the judges in the competition gave "Fagan" preference over all others, Senator Lodge gave it zero out of a possible one hundred. Says The Argonaut:

"With crude materials, imitating Kipling and London, he [the author of Fagan'] has made a crudely big, but by no means a great, story. The only point where Fagan' exhibits a trace of

genius is in the description of the Filipino girl. And this seems to be the opinion of most readers of intelligence. . . . Confirmatory evidence of this is that' Fagan' was rejected by two magazines before it was sent to the weekly's competition, where it was to win the grand prize.

But, truth to tell, there is no standard of excellence for short stories, and there never will be. Speaking roughly, they all fall into two classes: the imaginative and the intimate. Poe was the master of the first sort, and' The Fall of the House of Usher' stands, perhaps, as the best of all imaginative tales. But Poe knew nothing of life, was no close student of human character, was not privy to our most secret thought. About that he cared nothing. In a world he had himself created he dwelt content. Some of Maupassant's stories, on the other hand, are marvels of cynical dissection of human motives, as, for example, that improper one called Ball of Fat.' Here is exhibited a cruel intimacy with the springs of action that makes us writhe. James and Mrs. Wharton are other masters of the short story who write from sure knowledge. 'Fagan,' of course, falls into neither of these classes, but is interesting chiefly because of its unusual setting and simplicity of plot, which makes it comprehensible to the least intelligent reader.

"

D'ANNUNZIO'S UNSUCCESSFUL TRAGEDY..

CRI

RITICS differ as to the dramatic value and significance of Gabriele D'Annunzio's new play, the second of the projected trilogy. The first, "The Daughter of Jorio," was a study of popular superstition and passion, and despite its gloomy and somber character it was fascinating and full of a peculiar beauty of its own. The second," The Light Beneath the Bushel," recently produced with little success at Milan and Rome, is chiefly remarkable, it appears, for its rich and exuberant language. The symbolism, if there be symbolism in the tragedy, is hidden, and the plot is described as slight and crude. The play, indeed, is declared to be an unexampled collection of crimes and horrors. Some Italian and French critics, however, find power and meaning in it.

The tragedy is a study in decay-the decay of an ancient and once proud and great race. The scene is laid in Naples in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the main incidents of the story are as follows:

Tibaldo de Sangro is the head of the decaying house. He is threatened with heart disease and has little moral or physical strength. He has a son, Simonetto, who is even feebler and more degenerate; a daughter, Gigliola, who lives for revenge and is consumed by that passion, and a half-brother, Bertrando, who is the lover of his present wife, once the servant of his house and his deceased first wife.

Gigliola suspects her stepmother of having murdered her mother, and the play opens on the anniversary of that lady's death. It is a day of quarrels and bitter recriminations. The daughter has a scene with the stepmother, Angizia Fura, and Tibaldo has a violent quarrel with Bertrando. Angizia, in the course of the act, confesses the murder of her mistress and defies the young girl to attempt vengeance, claiming that the foul deed was committed with the approval and complicity of the father.

But the father turns upon the wicked and faithless Angizia, denouncing her as the criminal while solemnly protesting his own innocence. The spiritless and sickly brother is informed of the awful family tragedy, but he is merely thrown into a fit, and no action can be expected from him. The " Light Beneath the Bushel" is the flame in Gigliola's heart. It is she who must punish the treacherous, cruel, and venomous Angizia. But how? Angizia's father is a snake-catcher, and she is ashamed of him. When he appears in the decaying castle of Tibaldo, his daughter throws stones at his back.

Gigliola contrives to steal the snake-catcher's bag, filled with

vipers, and stirs up its contents. She is determined to poison her stepmother, but before she carries out her design Tibaldo himself kills his wife. Gigliola, meantime, dies in great agony as the result of her handling of the fatal bag. What happens to the other members of the decayed house the dramatist but vaguely indicates. They are all doomed, but the light is extinguished.

The Latin critics find much in the tragedy

to admire, and in spite of the absence of a love motive and of a plot characterized by suspense and development of character through action, it is strong and effective on the stage, in their opinion. How it appears to an AngloSaxon critic may be seen from the following expressions of the Rome correspondent of the London Times, who writes about the play as follows:

"Its purpose is that of the simplest kindto make the flesh creep. It is a modest ambition which d'Annunzio shares with his equally unromantic prototype, the fat boy in Pickwick; and even the fat boy's methods of achieving his end are scarcely more humble than those of the Italian author. Here is no dream of one who has 'supp'd full with horrors'; but only a cheap nightmare peopled with phantoms so worn with long use and age that they would scarce fright a babe. There is indeed something pathetic in a poverty of ideas so open and confessed that it is fain to furbish up such threadbare bogeys. The author seems to have come to the conclusion that the public is a coarse feeder, and that no food can be too rancid for its taste. One can only hope that he may some day realize the difference between one public and another, and discover the value of his present popularity. The one redeeming feature of his voice is his unexampled mastery of the music which lies in his own tongue; and even that is marred by his frequent use of affected or exotic words."

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Tolstoy's Literary Plans.-A staff writer for the liberal St. Petersburg daily, Nasha Zhizn (Our Life) gives an account of a recent visit to Count Leo Tolstoy's rural estate, Yasnaya Polyana, and his conversation with the great novelist about current and other topics. The Count, it appears, was full of energy, strength, and vitality, and displayed keen interest in such things as the war, European diplomatic intrigue, constitutional reform, agrarian discontent, etc. Withal, he spoke with withering contempt of newspapers and newspaper reading. He compared such reading to smoking, with all its "depressing, befogging, stupefying, demoralizing effects." For his own part, he does not read newspapers at all and depends for news on his family and visitors. His chief occupation consists in preparing the clearest possible exposition of his whole philosophy and applying it to practical problems of the day. The result will be an elaborate work. But there are several other things in process of completion, some of them of an artistic and imaginative form. Count Tolstoy was not ready to indicate their nature, but he was willing to announce the early appearance of a unique eclectic work-a sort of philosophical, social, and artistic encyclopedia-a collection of specimens of the best literature of all ages and countries. This he had conceived as necessary for the guidance of men and women who do not want to waste time on inferior or indifferent stuff, and who are desirous of following a course of really profitable reading.-Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

NOTES.

SCHILLER'S "Wilhelm Tell" is being played with great success in the chief theater of Tokio, we are informed by the London Academy. The characters have Japanese names, Tell is a Japanese hunter, and Gessler a Daimio.

SOME idea of the polyglot drama of New York may be had from the fact that during the dramatic season the hoardings near the Astor Library advertised theatrical performances in the German, Italian, Yiddish, Russian and French languages. The Chinese theater in New York does not advertise.

SCIENCE AND INVENTION.

A NEW ANESTHETIC.

O go to sleep quietly before a surgical operation, to slumber peacefully after it, and to waken as if from natural sleep with no recollection of what has happened, and with health and appetite unimpaired-all this seems an unrealizable ideal in anesthesia; yet we are assured that French physicians have found a new anesthetic that accomplishes all these results. Up to this time it can not be said that any substance in use has quite realized the surgeon's ideal. Chloroform and ether are the most common, but with chloroform there are occasional accidents which do not appear altogether preventable, even with the recent devices that enable the physician to administer it mingled with air in any desired proportion. As to ether, its well-known after-effects are most disagreeable. Some recent attempts to utilize the anesthetic qualities of other chemical substances, culminating in the discovery just mentioned, are described in Cosmos (Paris, May 27) by a contributor. He says:

"Other liquids, such as the bromid and chlorid of ethyl, or their mixture in certain proportions, produce rapid anesthesia with a minimum of danger, but their effect is fleeting, lasting scarcely one or two minutes, and it can generally be utilized only for very short operations-the opening of abscesses, the extraction of teeth, the removal of adenoid growths.

some

The writer reminds us that the awakening from the effects of all these anesthetics is more or less disagreeable. The Parisian hospitals, however, are experimenting with a substance that is said. not to possess this inconvenience. This agent, which is named scopolamin," is an alkaloid extracted from a plant (Scopolia japonica) of the nightshade family (Solanacea), sometimes known as 'Japanese belladonna." This has been familiar to physicians for many years as a sedative and it has even been used as an anesthetic since 1900, but the most successful methods date only from December last. The substance is now used mixed with morphine, and three hypodermic injections are required, each of which throws the patient into a deeper sleep until he is quite insensible. A peculiarity is that the muscles do not become flaccid, and that the patient may be awakened as from normal sleep. Says the writer:

"It is very important to note that no matter how deep the sleep may be, if the patient be shaken or spoken to loudly and insistently, or if a noise is made near him, he will awake precisely like a man in a natural sleep. But if he is pricked or pinched he shows not the slightest sensitiveness. This complete anesthesia, with persistence of the intellectual functions, is particularly striking with scopolamin, which seems to act exclusively on the sensitive fibers.

After the operation, the patient is placed in his bed, [where] he continues to sleep as calmly as before it; the breathing is very quiet, and not the least complaint is heard, tho sometimes there is a good deal of perspiration.

The duration of the sleep varies slightly with different subjects; it averages four or five hours after the operation (or nine to ten hours in all).

"The awakening takes place exactly as in ordinary sleep. The patient opens his eyes, and his face expresses astonishment at finding himself in bed. He tries to get his ideas together. . . and asks questions of those about him, wanting to know whether the operation has yet taken place; generally he calls for a drink and then goes to sleep again for several hours. Sometimes he stays awake and wants something to eat. Several have refused to believe that they had been operated upon.

Some surgeons, after the first injections of scopolamin, administer chloroform. The effects are nearly the same, and in this case the scopolamin has the advantage of saving the patient from apprehension of the operation and of the chloroform . . .; but this addition is unnecessary, and scopolamin alone appears to furnish a prolonged anesthesia without the inconveniences of chloroform." -Translation made for THE LITERAR Y DIGEST.

IN THE LABORATORY OF T.. A. EDISON,
The greatest "free-lance" inventor.

some of them energetic and ingenious enough to create numerous marketable inventions and thus maintain financial independence, is acknowledged by French Strother in an article on "The Modern Profession of Inventing," in The World's Work (New York, June); but he goes on to assert that these are exceptions, and that the typical modern inventor is the unknown man who toils with hundreds of his fellows in what are known as the "inventions departments" of great factories. Says Mr. Strother:

"The great majority of practical inventions are made by a grou of men of whom the public never hears. These men are members of one of the most complicated and highly organized of the modern professions. Every great manufacturing concern maintains, under one name or another, an 'inventions department,' employing men who are paid various salaries simply to develop inventions. They are supplied with every mechanical appliance to facilitate their work; the bills are paid by the company, and every invention they make is assigned to the company 'in consideration of salary and one dollar.' The General Electric Company, at Schenectady, N. Y., for example, employs about 800 men who devote much of their time to developing new ideas. It spends $2,500,000 a year in this development work. The Westinghouse Companies do the same thing; so does every progressive manufacturing concern of any consequence in the United States. And it is these unknown men, grappling with the every-day, practical problems of great manfactories, who make most of the inventions of immediate commercial value.

"The inventions departments, the modern development of inventing, are maintained by the great manufacturing concerns. The

National Cash Register Company, the Hoe Printing Press Company, the United Shoe Machinery Company, the Bell Telephone Company, and many others have each a corps of men, who have displayed the inventive faculty, at work on salary, developing the

ized. Mr. Strother tells us that the workers in all these different branches of an "inventions department" are recruited in various ways. Sometimes they are taken from the staff of the company, sometimes picked up from all sorts of outside occupations. In one case a groceryman from a small California town became a worker in such a department in a large company. According to Mr. Strother, the chance or haphazard inventor cuts little figure with us. Of the thirty thousand patents taken out annually in the United States, nearly all come from persons who make a business of inventing, either as free-lances" or on a salary.

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Courtesy of "The World's Work."

MR. CHARLES STEINMETZ, The chief engineer of the General Electric Company, and his latest invention, a model of his mercury arc current rectifier.

inventions needed. by the companies. In any one of these departments new devices are being created that will not be made public for years to come, because they are not yet perfected. The inventions by the time the public knows them are always months, and usually years, old.

66

The General Electric Company offers a typical example of the use of the inventions department. In an establishment employing 20,000 men, a round $2,500,000 is spent each year in developing patentable inventions. There are about fifty engineers at the head of various departments, and each of them is expected, as a part of his routine duty, to develop such improvements as are suggested by the needs of his department to keep it in a position to meet competition. Last year 1,412 ideas were carried to the management by 300 men, as patentable inventions. Of these 797 were found to be either impracticable or not new. The remaining 615 were developed by the company to such a degree of perfection that applications for patents were filed with the Patent Office at Washington. In round numbers, an average of 500 patents a year are taken out by the company, every one of them for a device of immediate commercial value. To handle the legal end of the company's patent business, drawing up applications for patents, carrying them through the Patent Office, and conducting suits for infringement, a corps of twelve lawyers and twenty-eight assistants is maintained at Schenectady, besides two lawyers at Washington and one in Europe. These figures give some idea of the dignified proportions of the profession of inventing; for this company is only one of scores which carry on similar work on a greater or lesser scale. Follow one of the 615 inventions patented last year through all the stages of its development and consider what an inventions department means when that work is multipiled by 615."

But this is not all. Not only are practicable inventions developed in this way, but laboratories of research in pure science are often carried on, at a cost of thousands of dollars, in the hope that discoveries will be made, in new fields, that can afterward be util

ΤΗ

THE COMING EXPRESS TRAIN.

HE ease with which the time between New York and Chicago has been cut from 20 to 18 hours on two different roads has been a matter of general remark. There is talk of another decrease to 17 or even 16 hours in the near future, and the public, as usual, is ready for anything. Electricity (New York) thinks that the electric locomotive will make further progress even easier. It says, editorially (June 14):

"From New York to Chicago was once considered a serious journey. In provincial days dangers beset the traveler on every side. Days were consumed in covering the distance. Now it is but a question of hours. Shall it be called the ultimate triumph of steam? Or shall we inquire as to what this ultimate triumph must be?

64

"The distance is roughly 1,000 miles between New York and Chicago. About 29 hours, cut down to 24, was the customary limit of time in covering it. A speed of 40 miles an hour averaged up along the route. This, during the Columbian Exposition, was considered splendid railroading. Since then the locomotive has undergone great changes. The well-fortified roadbed, connecting that city and ours, invited a higher speed. A 50-mile an hour rate then presented the average. The latest reports show a capacity on the part of the Pennsylvania and New York Central to regularly operate an 18-hour train. This means an average speed of over 55 miles an hour. Now comes the question again, Is this the ultimate triumph? We think not. The locomotive can spin along much faster than this. Speed must be made subservient to the conditions of the road-whether it is clear or not, whether it can stand the rapid pounding of this great engine or whether it is safe to hurry forward so impetuously.

"The suggestion is presented here that electric traction has set a new standard. The New York Central will use electric locomo