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Smart Grid and Enabling Technologies

(Wiley - IEEE) 1st Edition Omar


Ellabban
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Brings him a happy frame of mind.
Go to him, therefore, and confess—
Then I am yours if he says yes.

(She watches him as he hurries away)

Poor boy, without a single cent


Upon an empty errand bent!
THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.
By Warren Taylor.
The completion of the new building of the American Museum of
Natural History marks the second step toward the realization of one
of the most colossal schemes ever formed for the promotion of
science. The plan will not be fully carried out until the whole of
Manhattan Square, on a part of which the present edifice stands, is
covered with a structure of imposing extent and immense capacity,
which is to become the great headquarters of natural science on this
continent, and to rank on at least an equality with any similar
institution in the world.
Natural history is a department of knowledge that should be of
especial interest to the inhabitants of a country where nature
displays her wonders on so tremendous a scale and her riches in
such exhaustless variety. And indeed America’s contributions to that
branch of science have already been great. Of this the names of
Alexander Wilson, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, James E. DeKay,
James Dwight Dana, and others no less noteworthy, will serve as
sufficient evidence.
Scientific societies were among the earliest developments of
American intellectual life, and in our leading cities they have received
a constant and growing support. Oldest of all is the Philosophical
Society of Philadelphia, which issued scientific works as long ago as
1769. In 1780 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was
organized in Boston, and in 1812 the Philadelphia Academy of
Natural Science began its useful existence. New York was later in
entering the field. The Lyceum of Natural History, the germ of the
present establishment, was originated in 1817. In 1869 its collections
were destroyed by fire, but the disaster proved to be the beginning of
its expansion. Some prominent and public spirited members of the
society, realizing the importance of securing for it safer and more
extended quarters, took steps to establish it upon a broader basis as
one of the recognized institutions of the metropolis. The American
Museum of Natural History was incorporated by the Legislature, and
an ample and well situated plot of ground, covering four entire city
blocks, was assigned to its use by the municipal park department,
which has also paid for the erection and maintenance of the museum
building.
Of the immense structure designed by the incorporators of the
museum, an interior wing, about one twentieth part of the whole
mass, was the first erected. The corner stone was laid by President
Grant in June, 1874, and the building was opened in December,
1877. Its external appearance is by no means unattractive, although
in its design architectural beauty was subordinated to practical
considerations of light and arrangement. Its collections are displayed
in three great halls, one of which has its floor space almost doubled
by a capacious balcony. Above these is an attic story, containing the
library of the institution and a number of chambers set apart as
lecture rooms, laboratories, and the like.
THE NEW BUILDING OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

The board walk that runs diagonally from Seventy Seventh Street
and Central Park to Eighty First Street and Columbus Avenue—the
two points at which visitors usually approach the museum—passes,
midway, the present entrance, whose unpretentious aspect is a most
decided contrast to the solid magnificence of the newly finished front.
It leads directly to the first great hall, on the ground floor, which is
mainly occupied by the Jesup collection of American woods. This is
an assemblage of specimens of trees indigenous to North America,
wonderfully complete and well arranged. Each is cut so as to display
the bark and the polished and unpolished timber, with a colored map
that shows at a glance the geographical distribution of the species.
In most instances an entire section of the trunk is exhibited, and on
the west side of the hall there are two colossal specimens, worthy to
serve as round tables for King Arthur, which may prompt the
unobservant visitor to exclaim, “Those must be the Big Trees of
California!” Such is not the case, though both of them hail from the
Pacific coast, being respectively the Yellow and the Sugar Pine. A
specimen of the Sequoia gigantea is in an adjoining case, where it
attracts less attention because it is but a comparatively small
fragment of the trunk of one of those famous monarchs of the
vegetable kingdom.
In the same hall, in cases that stand along the center of the room
and in the window alcoves, are some bird groups that receive a
plentiful share of admiration. They deserve it, for as specimens of
accurate and artistic taxidermy they have rarely been equaled and
never excelled. They reproduce feathered life and its surroundings
with a fidelity that bespeaks thorough knowledge, remarkable skill,
and almost infinite patience. There are birds in every attitude—
perching, swimming, walking, and even flying—each in a setting that
very picturesquely shows its habitation and habits. The uninitiated
visitor can hardly persuade himself that the foliage, the herbage, and
the flowers that he sees through the glass can be the imperishable
product of an artificer’s ingenuity, and not the work of nature herself.
Some of the best of the groups are the robins, with their nest among
the pink blossomed apple boughs; the grebes, swimming in a happy
family upon a glassy imitation of water; the laughing gulls with their
nest in the bent grass; the Louisiana water thrush, domiciled under
an overhanging bank; the cat birds, the clapper rails, and the ruffed
grouse, these last so life-like that the visitor can almost fancy he
hears the brown leaves rustle beneath the feet of the chickens.
Great credit is due to Jenness Richardson, the museum’s chief
taxidermist, and Mrs. E. S. Mogridge, who jointly prepared this
beautiful series of exhibits.

THE BELLA BELLA INDIAN WAR CANOE.

A specimen that calls for a word of notice, as one of the most


valuable in the museum, stands on the right hand side of the
entrance to this lower hall. It is an awkward looking bird of medium
size, dark plumage, and disproportionately large bill, and its label
designates it as the Great Auk. It is, in fact, one of the very few
extant relics of a species that has within the memory of living man
disappeared from the earth. There are but three others in this
country—one in the National Museum at Washington, one in the
Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science, and one in the collection
belonging to Vassar College. The money value of a specimen of
such rarity is hard to fix precisely, but it undoubtedly runs into the
thousands of dollars.
A DETHRONED IDOL.

The second floor—the main story of the building—is principally


devoted to cases of stuffed birds. These multitudinous rows of single
specimens, each perched upon its neat stand of cherry wood, are, of
course, less picturesque than the grouped figures, but are
nevertheless of great interest and value. The martial aspect of the
eagles, the curious structure of the pelicans and secretary birds, and
the bright plumage of the flamingoes, the peacocks, and the argus
pheasant attract attention and admiration.
Here, too, are the osseous remains of the late lamented Jumbo, to
whom has fallen the rare privilege of achieving a double immortality;
for while his pachydermatous hide, stuffed with straw, is still a
feature of the “Greatest Show on Earth,” his skeleton stands
majestically on the visitor’s right hand as he enters the second hall of
the museum. Sea lions, walruses and other marine monsters are
also to be found on this floor, besides a few stuffed groups. One of
these last shows a family of screech owls, with their nest deep in a
hollow tree. Another—one of the best in the museum—represents a
scene in the tree tops of Borneo, and includes five fine specimens of
the orang-utan, or Wild Man of the Woods, the great simian that
disputes with the African chimpanzee and gorilla, the honor of being
the brute’s nearest approach to man. Playing among the branches
and eating the fruit of the durian, we see here a group that shows the
orang-utan (we follow the spelling adopted by the museum) at
various periods of its life and growth. There are a baby, a young
female, a full grown male, and two veterans—one of either sex—with
long, black hair and hideously wrinkled faces.
Ascending to the gallery above, we find a large and varied
collection of implements of savage tribes and relics of prehistoric
man. A huge case of skulls, whose owners lived and breathed
thousands of years ago, is a ghastly reminder of the continuity of
human history. Implements of stone and flint from France, from
Denmark, and from the Mississippi valley are silent witnesses of the
days before the discovery of the art of working iron. There are also a
couple of notable groups—one of opossums and one of muskrats.
The latter is a singularly faithful reproduction of nature. It shows a
muskrat swimming by the bank of a pond, whose glassy surface is
blurred by the ripples that mark his course. White and yellow lilies
float on the water, from which rises a muskrat house, opened at the
side to show one of its inmates lunching upon a reed stem. The
sandy bank of the pond is pierced by galleries from which there
peeps a young rat.
From the ceiling, in the center of the hall, there hangs a huge
Indian war canoe, which once bore the warriors of the Bella Bella
tribe, in British Columbia, over the waters of Queen Charlotte’s
Sound. Though capacious enough to carry a small regiment, it was
made from the wood of a single tree.
THE MASTODON—AN EXTINCT INHABITANT OF NORTH AMERICA.

The third floor of the museum is devoted to collections of shells


and minerals, which include a wealth of interesting specimens. There
is a sheet of itacolumite, or flexible sandstone, from North Carolina,
so arranged that its power of bending can be tested by turning a
screw; there are stibnite (antimony ore) from Japan, galenite (lead
ore) from Missouri, gold quartz from California, calamine from New
Jersey, as well as chalcopyrite, marcasite, and a host of other
minerals of strange name and form. On one small tray are grouped
reproductions of the world’s most famous diamonds, showing the
exact size and appearance of these little pebbles for which dynasties
have been overthrown. One of them is labeled “the Koh-i-noor, value
$1,000,000.” It is safe to say that Queen Victoria is not offering the
original for sale at that price. And if the Koh-i-noor, which weighs 125
karats, is worth a million, what must be the value of the Great Mogul
diamond, of 297 karats?
Further down the same row of cases are amethysts, beryls,
agates, and other semi-precious stones. Among these is a curious
section of an agatized tree from Chalcedony Park, Arizona. It was
mineralized by the waters of a hot silicated spring, the silica
replacing the wood as it decayed, particle by particle.
In the center of the hall stands a remarkably perfect skeleton of a
mastodon, the huge prehistoric elephant that once roamed over
Europe and North America. This specimen was found in a peaty
swamp near Newburgh, New York, in 1879. Compared with the bony
framework of Jumbo on the floor below—the two monsters were
separated, perhaps, in order to prevent jealousy between them—the
mastodon is shorter in stature, but considerably longer. He stands 8
feet 5 inches from the ground, while his length “over all” is 18 feet,
and his immense curved tusks measure 7 feet 5 inches. Near the
entrance there is the skeleton of a moa, the great extinct ostrich of
New Zealand, and at the further end of the hall that of another
animal that existed in the dawn of man’s history—the great Irish elk,
found in a peat bog near Limerick.
The raised map of New Hampshire, which stands in an alcove on
the left hand side of the entrance, is the product of an immensity of
care and labor. It is constructed to a scale of a mile to the inch, the
elevation being exaggerated about five times, or to a scale of a
thousand feet to the inch. It is a good illustration of the value of this
sort of map in giving a graphic and comprehensive idea of the
topographical and geological formation of a country.
A SCREECH OWL FAMILY.

On the wall on the other end of the hall are two large tablets of
triassic rock from Massachusetts, showing the foot prints—or “au-
toe-graphs,” as James Russell Lowell once ventured to call them—of
some huge reptile, and of tiny insects and shellfish.
Throughout his inspection of the museum’s contents, the visitor
will have noticed that every inch of available space has been
occupied, and that the exhibits are in some cases cramped for lack
of room. The opening of the new building will effectually remedy this,
and provide ample accommodations for the collections and their
probable augmentation for some time to come. Its halls are now
being fitted up with cases. Its appearance is imposing, and not
devoid of a solid and substantial style of architectural beauty. Its
general character is Romanesque. The front, which faces Seventy
Seventh Street, is of a rough, light reddish stone, with a lofty and
rather heavy looking roof of red tiles. It is approached by two wide
flights of stone steps, connected with a spacious arched portico by a
bridge that passes over a basement entrance below—a very
convenient and symmetrical arrangement. Like the older building,
the newly finished structure has unusually ample window light, and is
altogether well adapted to the purpose for which it is designed.
NO BARGAIN.
We were riding home together,
When I told her of my love;
It was gentle summer weather,
And the moon looked down above
With a very bashful brightness,
Just as though it wished to say
“If I could, for sheer politeness,
I would look the other way;”
And the little pony trotted
On with such a leisure gait,
I believe that he had plotted
To be lazy, kind and late;
So I told her how my breast hid—
Like a bee within the hive—
Love, and hopefully suggested
She might drive.

In her hands the ribbons fluttered,


And the pony seemed to know
There was something tender uttered,
And he took it very slow;
Then I leaned a trifle nearer
To the maiden at my side,
And I told my pretty hearer
How delightful ’twere to ride
On and on with her forever
If she would but be my wife—
How ’twould be my one endeavor
To make happy all her life;
And the brief reply that met me
In my memory remains
Like a thorn—“If you will let me
Hold the reins.”

I said,
Discreetly, “No.”
And so
We didn’t wed.
BROOKLYN’S STATUE OF BEECHER.
By R. H. Titherington.

“Let the sound of those he wrought for,


And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bourne forevermore.”

Tennyson’s lines on the Duke of Wellington may well be applied to


the monument that Brooklyn has set up to commemorate her
greatest citizen and the foremost of all American preachers. The
recently unveiled statue of Beecher could hardly be better placed
than at the junction of two main arteries of traffic, and facing the City
Hall. It stands at the heart of Brooklyn, as in another sense Beecher
stood, during his life, at the heart of Brooklyn and of the nation. Its
location is in keeping with the character of the statue, and with those
sides of the great man’s nature which it especially typifies. It should,
perhaps, have been set so as to face away from the City Hall, rather
than toward it. It is certainly somewhat unfortunate that that which
meets the eye of most of those who see it should be the back of the
statue, draped in the folds of a heavy cloak.
THE STATUE IN FRONT OF THE BROOKLYN CITY HALL.

The monument itself, as may be inferred from the mention of John


Quincy Adams Ward as its designer, is one that shows intelligent and
conscientious work besides much technical skill. It is animated by a
definite conception of its subject, and partakes of the character of an
ideal group as well as that of an actual likeness. The subsidiary
portion is of course wholly ideal; while the central figure itself is
something more than a reproduction of the form and features of its
original. Those who remember Mr. Beecher only in the last few years
of his life may be inclined to think that the lines of the statue’s face
are too deep and emphatic, that its expression has too much
positiveness and strength, and too little gentleness and benignity.
There is truth in this criticism, if criticism it can be called. The
sculptor prepared for his task by taking a death mask of Mr.
Beecher’s face; but from the more rounded outlines of the preacher’s
later years he deliberately went back to show him as he was in the
prime of life, in those stirring times when he led the vanguard of
freedom’s forces. The statue is Beecher as he will live in the grateful
memory of posterity, rather than as he lives in the affectionate
recollection of surviving friends. It is the Beecher of history.
HENRY WARD BEECHER.

Indeed, the designer has struck the very keynote of Beecher’s


immortality. He has given us the man who voiced the cause of
emancipation in the days when it was the protest of the minority
against a great wrong firmly intrenched in the possession of power;
the man who faced anti-abolition mobs in New York and the
prejudice of a nation in England; the man who all through his life
seemed to delight in facing unjust opposition and in fighting the
battle of the weak against the strong.
He was born during the war of 1812, a perilous crisis in our
national history. To quote from the memoir compiled by members of
his family, “he carried war in him as a birthmark, but with him it was
war against wickedness and wrong.” He was an abolitionist in his
undergraduate days at Amherst, where his first attacks upon human
slavery were made in the college debating society. Then, as a young
minister in an Ohio River town, he was brought into close contact
with the institution, and saw its actual horrors. He returned east to
Brooklyn to lift up in that city a voice that presently made itself heard
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He would accept no compromise, and
fought with all his powers against that offered in 1850 by Henry Clay.
“For every free State,” he cried, “it demands one State for slavery.
One dark orb must be swung into its orbit, to groan and travail in
pain, for every new orb of liberty over which the morning stars shall
sing for joy.”
He knew full well the strength of the forces arrayed against him.
“An Abolitionist,” he said later in life, “was enough to put the mark of
Cain upon any young man that arose in my early day, and until I was
forty years of age it was punishable to preach on the subject of
liberty. It was enough to expel a man from church communion if he
insisted on praying in prayer meeting for the liberation of the slaves.
If a man came to be known as an anti-slavery man it almost preluded
bankruptcy in business.”
Several times angry crowds gathered near Plymouth Church and
threatened to attack it, but Beecher cared nothing for personal
danger. When the irrepressible conflict between liberty and slavery
was reddening the plains of bleeding Kansas, he took up a collection
in the church to buy rifles for the free soilers. Some of them were
sent through the enemy’s lines in Missouri in boxes marked “bibles,”
and though this was done without his knowledge, “Beecher’s bibles”
became a proverbial synonym for improved firearms.
When the flame first kindled in Kansas spread to blaze forth into
the war of the Rebellion, none realized more fully than he the stern
duties of the hour. Beecher was away from Brooklyn when the news
came that Fort Sumter had been attacked. On reaching home he
was greeted by his eldest son with the question, “Father, may I
enlist?” “If you don’t I’ll disown you,” he replied.
He threw himself heart and soul into the work of arming for the
defense of the Union. Plymouth Church became a rendezvous for
regiments passing to the front, and its pastor’s house at 124
Columbia Heights a veritable storehouse for military goods. He was
largely instrumental in raising and equipping three regiments for the
Union army. The third of these, which he organized almost unaided,
was the Long Island Volunteer regiment, afterward enrolled as the
Sixty Seventh New York. In this his son, Henry Barton Beecher, held
a lieutenant’s commission.
Indeed, Beecher’s enthusiasm outran the government’s
unreadiness. Lack of necessary funds compelled the army
authorities to delay the acceptance of his volunteers; and in the
summer of 1862, after McClellan had made his fruitless attempt to
reach Richmond, Beecher gave voice to his impatience at what
seemed to him the inactivity of the authorities at Washington. He
hated half measures, and believed that the nearest way to peace lay
through a vigorous prosecution of the war.
In June, 1863, he sought to find, in a brief visit to England, rest
and recuperation for bodily and mental powers exhausted by the
strain they had endured. Those were the darkest days of the war.
Two years of campaigning, and vast expenditures of blood and
treasure, had done little or nothing to break down the rebellion.
Vicksburg was defying the desperate efforts of Grant, while in the
East Lee, at the head of his veteran army, was pressing forward to
invade Pennsylvania and outflank Washington. All the world looked
upon the United States as on the eve of splitting asunder. In England
the sympathy of the laboring men was with the North, but the upper
social and official classes were solidly on the other side. Even such a
man as Gladstone declared that “Jefferson Davis had created a
nation,” and only a few tribunes of the people like John Bright and
Richard Cobden publicly pleaded the cause of freedom.
With his love of battling against unjust opposition, it is not strange
that Beecher was drawn into a crusade against the prejudices that
he found prevalent in England—a crusade undertaken without
premeditation, but one whose results proved it to be one of his most
notable services to his country. It was begun in the Free Trade Hall
at Manchester, where he faced a great and hostile assemblage,
secured a hearing by sheer pluck and persistence, and then, by his
magnificent oratorical power and the conscious justice of his cause,
won a victory that was afterward repeated in the other chief cities of
England and Scotland. His speeches turned the balance of British
sentiment, and warned the government from the path that might
have led to intervention in the struggle.
“I believe I did some good,” Beecher himself said, in speaking of
his missionary work in England. A New York journal of that time put it
more strongly. “The administration at Washington,” it remarked, “has
sent abroad more than one man to represent the cause of the North
and press it upon the minds of foreign courts and citizens; but here is
a person who goes abroad without official prestige, on a mere
private mission to recruit his health, and yet we doubt whether his
speeches in England have not done more for us by their frank and
manly exposition of our principles, our purposes, and our hopes,
than all the other agencies employed.”
The value of Beecher’s work in England was fully recognized by
President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton. With these leaders, whom
he had never hesitated to criticise when he believed it his duty to do
so, he now entered into warm relations. It was he who was invited to
deliver the address at the raising of the old flag over the regained
Fort Sumter.
His active participation in public affairs continued up to his death.
His part in the election of 1884 is of course fresh in the memory of
readers—so fresh, indeed, that it can hardly be reviewed without
intrenching upon the prejudices of present day partisanship.

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