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Items of Interest Gathered Here and There
Airships of War.
The British War Department’s airship Nulli Sec
undus must be credited with a very impressive per
formance in traveling against a ten mile breeze
from Farnborough to the War Office in London,
thirty-two miles away. As the Nulli Secundus hov
ered over St. Paul’s and turned to recross the
Thames the thought must have occurred to the up
gazing multitudes of people observing her wonder
ful evolutions that an enemy equipped with a fleet
of dirigible ships capable of keeping the air for
twenty-four hours would be able to drop enough dy
namite in the streets of London to destroy the
city.
But aerial navigation, whether for peace or war
purposes, is still an unsolved problem. Practical
aeronautics depends upon the ability to contend
with winds that take rude liberties with seagoing
craft, so incomparably more stanch, manageable
and safe than any airship that has yet been invent
ed. It is no great matter if an airship operated for
pleasure meets with a mishap and must descend,
but the airship designed for war will be of doubt
ful effectiveness unless she can continue on her
course at the will of her navigators and maintain
an altitude beyond the reach of Held artillery.
The Continental War Departments are also ex
perimenting with airships, but do not make a public
holiday of their ascents. In the Parseval Germany
possesses an airship that has sailed against a wind
of seventeen miles an hour and proved herself di
rigible. She turns, mounts and descends with case.
Experiments with the Parseval are still being made,
so that it may be assumed there is plenty of room
for improvement. The Parseval is only one of sev
eral airships that are competing for the approval
of the War Department at Berlin. In Belgium and
Austria the ability of field artillery to riddle bal
loons —not airships, it should be understood —has
been tested. The Belgian War Department has per
mitted the publication of its experiments. It was
of course necessary to anchor the balloons, and as
the question to be settled was the altitude of effect
ive fire it was of no great consequence whether the
target was swinging at the end of a tether or hold
ing a course. Shrapnel was used by the field guns,
and the distances of the balloon from the earth va
ried from 1,300 to 4,500 yards. The guns were 4
inch and 5.9 inch. One balloon was hit 149 times,
and another forty-six times. The gondola as well
as the bag was pierced, and even the anchoring
rope was severed.
It was thus established that an airship must
keep out of the range of modem field pieces to
navigate over the enemy’s country with impunity.
But the danger from artillery gives war offices the
least concern: airships carry small crews and the
loss of their complement is not worth considering.
If a ship can be designed to move in any direction
desired, up and down and against any wind not a
gale, and if her voyages can be extended to days
instead of hours and minutes, war will become more
like hell than 12 inch guns and lyddite make it to
day, and there may some time be a Hague confer
ence which will declare for universal and eternal
peace.
Old Men in the Senate.
William Boyd Allison, of lowa, has been in Con
gress forty-two years, ever since the second inaugu
ration of Abraham Lincoln. For thirty-four years
he has been a Senator, and now he announces him
self as ready to receive a seventh term. Already his
record of senatorial service is unequaled, and if he
shall serve out another term he will have held his
seat for forty-two years, and been in Congress
a full half century.
The increasing tendency to continue old men in
the Senate is a remarkable development of our
politics.
It is surely not due to the softness of the berth.
The Senate is the most influential and the hardest
working legislative body in the country; in either
respect it has few equals in the world. Yet the
men in it who have passed middle age must con
stitute nearly half of its membership.
The Golden Age fcr October 24, k 907
There are fourteen who are more than three
score and ten, and half a dozen of thes* are above
seventy-five. Five of the twelve senators from
New England are septuagenarians. At least twenty
members have served more than two terms. Half
of the New England senators are in that favored
class.
Long terms in the Senate of the United States
are a comparatively new fashion. They were rare
in the first half of the nineteenth century. The
name of Thomas H. Benton suggests a striking ex
ception to the rule in those earlier days, for he
sat in the Senate thirty years.
The truth is that a seat there was not so much
coveted then as now. Men resigned it lightly.
With three exceptions—Strong, Pickering and Var
num —no Massachusetts senator, until Webster,
served the length of one term.
George Cabot and Samuel Dexter resigned from
the Senate to accept Cabinet places, and Harrison
Gray Otis threw up his place even to be mayor of
Boston. John Quincy Adams was so insulted when
the legislature indicated its preference for another
as his successor that he refused to serve out his
term. Benjamin Goodhue, Dwight Foster, and Eli
Porter Ashmun, resigned for no public reason what
ever. James Lloyd, who was twice elected, resigned
each time before completing his six years.
When Webster had served fourteen years he re
tired to enter Harrison’s cabinet. Being re-elected,
he again retired after five years to accept a place
in Fillmore’s cabinet.
Hoar’s twenty-seven years and Sumner’s twenty
three in the Senate gave them the record from
Massachusetts, and each served until death. Wil
son had served eighteen years when he left to be
vice-president. Dawes, at the end of eighteen years,
was forced out and his seat was taken by Mr. Lodge,
who has now been in fourteen years.
The Senate has made so great a relative gain
in attractiveness in our time that resignations are
extremely few.
When Mr. Cleveland was first president, he in
duced three senators —Bayard, Lamar and Garland
—to give up their seats and join his cabinet. It
would not be possible for a president to do that
now. A senator with a special ambition might con
ceivably prefer the State or Treasury Department,
but in generalizing it is safe to say that senators
will no longer willingly exchange a senatorship for
any other post tfian that of the presidency itself.
And this promotion seems to be denied them, for
no man ever has passed directly from the Senate
Chamber to the White House, although Garfield was
a senator-elect when presidential lightning struck
him. —The Boston Globe.
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The Disputed Origin of "Baseball.
Real baseball is over sixty-one yeai-s old, says
Henry Beach Needham in Success Magazine. But
the origin of the “national game” is more in dis
pute than the etymology of the term “fan.” The
veteran journalist, Henry Chadwick, popularly
known as the “father of baseball,” who is English
born, contends that baseball, while an American
sport, had its origin in the game played by the
English schoolboy called “rounders.” “The basic
principle of both games,” Mr. Chadwich argues, “is
the use of a bat, a bail, and bases.” But it is a
short bat and a soft ball, and the player, on hitting
the ball, endeavors to make a circuit —a round —of
all the bases —in our vocabulary, a home run. As
a clincher, Mr. Chadwick says that when debating
the question with Albert G. Spalding, there entered
the room a devotee of sport, Andrew Peck, whose
name, coupled with that of his partner, Snyder,
was known to most American boys of twenty years
ago in connection with a popular style of ice skates.
“When did you begin to play baseball?” inquired
Mr. Spalding.
“In the latter part of the forties.” replied Mr.
Peck, “about 1847 or 1848.”
“What was the game called then 9”
“Why, ‘rounders,’ ” said Mr. Peck
But to this day, Mr. Spalding, proud Yankee to
the core, is unconvinced. Undoubtedly the foreign
taint in baseball bothered him not a little tor a
- but he disposed of it to his satisfaction in
the spring of 1889, when he visited Liverpool, after
a tour of the British colonies, with the Chicago and
all-American baseball teams. Throughout the trip
English subjects had chided him with the antece
dent of the American national game, so he issued
a challenge to the champion rounder club of Great
Britain, which was promptly accepted. By the
terms of agreement, the British champions were to
play a one-inning rounder match (two innings make
a full game) with a team of eleven men picked from
the American “basebailers,” as the Englishmen
called them, and then there was to be a five-inning
game of baseball. As “feeder” (pitcher) for his
eleven, Mr. Spalding was given a leather-covered
sphere about the size of a golf ball and rather soft.
The rounder batsman faced him with a miniature
cricket bat —“a cross between a potato-masher and
a penholder.” A high ball was “fouled”—as the
Yankees called it—but the referee declared it a fair
hit, and as the batter made a circuit of the four
boundary posts before the ball was recovered, he
scored four runs. The next batsman repeated the
trick, and there was a total of eight runs to the
credit of the Englishmen. Then “feeder” Spald
ing resorted to low balls close to the batsman’s
body, and only three more runs were made before
the eleven British champions were put out, and the
inning was over. These last runs resulted from the
failure of an American to hit one of the champions
with the ball, as the rules permit.
In their half of the inning, the Yankees were in
clined at first to try to “line out” the ball, and the
results were disastrous. But soon they got the hang
of batting with one hand, and scored eight runs
before the eleven men were retired. This left them
three runs behind.
The baseball game was an entirely different story.
Three Englishmen struck out, and then the Ameri
cans went to bat. Thirty-five men crossed the plate,
and still the side had not been retired. Because of
physical exhaustion both teams were content that
the match be declared off. Thus the first inning in
the baseball game was never finished; yet the score
stood 35 to 0 in favor of the Americans.—The Amer
ican Boy.
n »e
The Largest 'Retail Drug Store.
The greatest drug store in the world is said to
be found in Russia. It exists in Moscow and is
203 years old. Its title is the Old Nikolska Phar
macy, and since 1833 it has been in the family of
the present proprietor. It is a building of impos
ing dimensions, with many departments, including
one of professional education for the staff, which
numbers 700 persons. About 2,000 prescriptions are
said to be dispensed daily.—The New York Medi
cal Journal.
Here is a case of mingled gratitude and advertis
ing:
Mr. Editor: I desire to thank the friends and
neighbors most heartily in this manner for the unit
ed aid and co-operation during the illness and
death of my late husband who escaped from me by
the hand of death on Friday last while eating break
fast. To the friends and all who contributed so
willingly toward making the last moments and fu
neral of my husband a success, I desire to remem
ber most kindly, hoping these few lines will find
them enjoying the same blessings. I have also a
good milk cow and a roan gelding horse, eight years
old, which I will sell cheap. “God moves in a mys
terious way his wonders to perform, he plants his
footsteps upon the sea and rides upon the storm,”
also a black and white shoat very low. —Exchange.
This nugget of wisdom is going the rounds:
“Let us have it thoroughly understood that a man
walks to his political doom who thinks of anything
else but the public welfare in connection with pub
lic office.” This is the sentiment of Governor
Charles E. Hughes, expressed in a recent speech.
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