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\ tf - > r »i \ -wV &"£ «,-", ^ Tt^ '* ^ * j, ! < - , R - n f*>Z~ *;'l« PPi "S . ntS"'? " 4^1 HEREtERT F. JACKSON ALTHOUGH so much vis­ited and so much writ­ten about, there is very little accurate popu­ lar understanding of the history of Inde­ pendence hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed July 4, 1776, 133 years ago. Its construction was begun in 1732, about 60 years after the first landing of 5Vllliam Penn at the site of Philadelphia, near the house known as the Blue Anchor tavern. It is ascribed sometimes to the working of inscrutable des­ tiny that Independ- dependettoe engrossed o» parchment Three copies of It, according to one tradition, were signed in the Independence chamber, one of which now hangs there, behind the table and chair used by John Han­ cock and George Washington, the former while presiding over the continental congress, the latter over the . constitutional convention. The original Is preserved in the state department at Washington and lately has shown such Indications of crumbling away that President Roosevelt some time ago ordered that it be kept in a locked safe. Many more impressive events and ceremonies took place at Inde­ pendence hall. The British defiled it with cruelty to American pris­ oners during the occupation of Philadelphia by the troops of Gen. Howe. The flags captured by the Americans and French at York- town were received here by congress. The second inauguration o! i tW.'-S If DECLARATION H^ISbv Albert Pavson Terhutie ISAAC NEWT0N~The Wan Who Turned Accidents to Account m . .. •' • •» . ^ t mceThalfshould have been made ready for the oo- jt;1 « f " -cupasy of the Provincial assembly and the goir- W' 1*"' ernor's council virtually at the exact time wham LK the colonies of Great Britain in America began If/ ?**'.* to feel their growing strength sufficiently to ta­ ll' , dnce them to Insist more than ever before upon W" V/,*- the right to be specially mindful of their own ln- pL . i- terests. It was only a quarter of a century after I /, #/,<-, the "old Liberty Bell" was cast by patriotic ar­ il* *; tisans in this city that it was used to gather the wV people to hear the proclamation, by order of the S;f>/ continental congress, of the absolute political sep- 1 v f a9 l, aration of the 13 colonies from the mother coun- ( try. The state house sheltered not only the %» v? continental congress during many critical sea- sions, bat also the supreme council of the feder- g*V « , " ation of the United States, the constitutlonaf con- vention of 1787, the supreme court of the United t *; *' f states and the provincial and state legislature & ' , of Pennsylvania in that long period of the con- P-5 ceptlon, birth and infancy of the western repub- lie. Every man of any distinction whatever in that great epoch, from Andrew Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin to Lafayette and Pulaski, passed through its portals. It is the silent surviv­ ing witness of a stupendous past, so stupendous Indeed that hardly anything is more wonderful than the absolute simplicity of the austere Btage setting of those dramatic actions which indirectly transformed the whole political world. William Penn's council of state first met in George Guest's unfinished house near the mouth . of Dock creek, afterward called the "Blue Anchor tavern." Settlers at that time were living In caves along the west bank of the Delaware riv­ er. It is also supposed to have met in the Swedes' church at Wicaco, down the river, and In William Penn's house in Laetltia court, the same which now stands in Fairmount park, until It removed to the new state house in 1747. The Provincial assembly probably sat in the first rough meeting house erected for the worship of / IALL WHEREIN OF ifiPEPEtlOEtlQE WAS ADOPTED though provided with Immense chimney-places, and that these stoves cost about £28 provincial money. The second room pre­ pared for regular occupancy- was the western one on the ground floor. The justices of the pro­ vincial supreme court who first sat there were John Kinsey, Thomas Graeme and William Till. A bell, probably brought from England by William Penn, was hung in a tree near the govern­ or's headquarters as early as 1685 and rung when it was desired to bring the people together or upon occasions of solem­ nity. It is believed to have been transferred to the cupola of the old court house, in High (Market) street about 1697, and • aft­ erward to have been placed temporarily In the tower of the new state house. In Oc­ tober, 1751, the me­ morable order was s e n t t o R o b e r t STATUE. OE GEORGE MStlttiGIQn iri.i Pl| I-'••'it' m - y Si • £ H'.- r- •; ivu^u uiccuiig uuusc tnevLeu IUI tut? wursuip UL Friends shortly after Penn's arrival, and then In the later one on Front street known as the Bank Meeting house. But it also sat elsewhere, some­ times in houses that were erected for private use. :-f - It was in January, 1729, that the assembly, awake finally to the need of a suitable provincial ^P'tol, voted £2,000 ($10,000), toward its cost \, 1 appropriated the same out of an issue of pa* • » » 3 p e r m o n e y w h i c h i t h a d j u s t a u t h o r i z e d . W i l l i a m »v ' Allen, who was afterward one of Philadelphia's 5 most famous mayors and became a Justice of the ¥* •" 1 supreme court, acted as the agent of the province ! " . in the purchase of the lots of ground on Chest- iuw nut street, from Fifth to Sixth, and extending Iff , half-way back toward "Walnut street, which formed the chosen site. It was not until 1769 that Is ) <fie remainder of the square was acquired. Dr. fr*}/ Kearsley, the architect of Christ church, aspired ft » 1 also to design the state house, and is said to have been disgruntled because he was not permitted to do so. Thomas Lawrence, Andrew Hamilton and Dr. John Kearsley composed the building com­ mittee. The main structure, minus the great tower. Which had not yet been built, was in a rough state when, in September, 1736, William Allen, ttie mayor, gave a banquet and frolic in the Long Cpom In the second story, which was to be the «cene of so many later revelries and solemnities :u well. | Public contractors were dilatory in those days •a in these, and it was not until 1745 that the room of the assembly in the state house was com­ pleted. It is curious to note that it was heated at that time by means of two open stoves, al- Charles, the provincial agent in London, for a bell of 2,000 pounds weight The Bupeijntendents of the state house, Isaac Norrls, Thomas Leech and Edward Warner, wrote: "Let the bell be cust by the best workmen and examined carefully before It is shipped, with the following words well-shaped In large letters round it, viz.: "'By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania, for the State House t& the City of Philadelphia, 1752.' "And underneath, "'Proclaim Liberty Through All the Land to All the Inhabitants Thereof.--Levit., 25:10."' This bell duly arrived before the end of thlrt year, but In March, 1753, it cracked. It was at first determined to send It back to England to be re­ cast, but two artisans, named Pass and Stow, de­ clared that they could recast it, and they did so, adding some copper alloy to improve the quality of the metal. The enterprise proved a success, except that the tone of the bell wa3 not entirely satisfactory. Pass and Stow were * unmercifully teased in public on the score of having used too much alloy. They asked and obtained the privi­ lege of again recasting the bell. The result of this second attempt of its kind in America was the historic tocsin which 23 years (>|Ster was lit­ erally to "proclaim liberty throughout the land." Another bell was also ordered from England by the assembly, but It did not take the place of the American bell until the latter was cracked again In 1835, while being tolled on the occasion of the death of Chief Justice Marshall. In 1767 came the agitation over the tax on tea and other imported commodities. John Dickin­ son's letters of a "Farmer" rubbed this and other object lessons, stupidly given by the British min­ istry, deep into men's minds. The act was re­ pealed in 1777, except in so far as it related "to tea. When news of the Lexington-Concord fight in April, 1775, arrived, the bell in the state house steeple again called 8,000 people together, and they unanimously agreed to defend wltlr their arms, their lives, liberty and property. The cli­ max of the first period of the etrugy.e was fast approaching. The second continental congress met in the state house on May 10, H75, the Pro­ vincial assembly having yielded to it the cham­ ber that was ever after to be sanctified by Its labors. In June, 1776, began the debating of the question of independence. The preliminary reso­ lution proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Vir­ ginia, declaring that the colonies "are of right and ought to be free and independent states," tm adopted in committee on the night of June 10, but it was not until June 28 that the draft of the Declaration of Independence was submitted to con­ gress. On July 1 congress adopted the resolu­ tion, and that day and the three following were devoted to discussion in committee of the whole of the Declaration itself. It was passed on the evening of the Fourth, Not until August 2 was the Declaration of la- Washington as president and that also of John Adams took place in what is now known as Congress hall, adjoining the state house to the west, which was not built until 1787-9. It was here tjiat congress re­ ceived the news of the deafci of Washington. ~ Much work of restoration has made Independence hall what it is to-day. In general, this work has been directed by careful study of the past. Zealous co-operation of or­ ganized bodies and individuals has also brought together In the state house many objects of venerable value as illustrative of the early days of the nation. The stranger naturally desires a succinct, service­ able statement of the things of pe­ culiar interest that the state house contains. The Declaration chamber, where the continental congress and the constitutional convention sat, is, with the exception of a new flooring, substantially in the same state In which It was then. The walls are hung with portraits of many of the signers of the Declaration of Inde­ pendence or of the constitution* many of them painted by contem­ poraneous artists. A portrait o| Washington preserved here is by Peale. Here are the chair and tables used by the presiding officers of both bodies, Hancock and Washington, and many of the chairs occupied bF the members or dele­ gates. On the president's table Is the silver Ink­ stand used in signing both the Declaration of In­ dependence and the constitution. In the rear portion of the main lobby of the state house is the Liberty bell, useless except as a sacred memorial of the past. It Is suspended upon the same framework of timbers which formerly held It In place In the tower, but which now rests on the floor. Passing up the grand stairway, some of the most noteworthy portraits in the collection are found upon its walls. Among them are those of Washington, Lafayette, William Penn, Louis XVI., George III., and Gov. James Hamilton, the figures being of full length and heroic size. The Long room, or Banqueting hall, in the sec­ ond story, contains ,a sofa, chair and pew-v6uC& used by George Washington, the last mentioned in Christ church; West's painting of the treaty-ma­ king scene at the great elm tree, portraits of Martha Washington, the British sovereigns of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from and in­ cluding Charles II. to George II., and many notables, both civil and military, of the revolutionary period. The two other rooms on this floor are similarly enriched. Good Dame Newton, farmer"* wid­ ow, of Woolstrop, England, was In despair at the stupidity of her only son, Isaac. To the horror of all the neighbors the lad could not grasp the first principles of farming. He neg­ lected his work in the fields, failed to show any interest in crops and was forever sneaking off into corners to read some book on science or me­ chanics. He had picked up a taste for such matters at the Grantham Grammar school, and they weaned him away from all concern about his mother's thriving farrb. He took to devising mechanical toys in off hours, and even constructed & couple of dun dials. Isaac actually wanted to be a scholar. A scholar, to the simple farm folk, meant a man in a tattered, rusty gown, who was glad enough to eat the crust of charity and who accom­ plished no good in life. Yet for such a miserable career Isaac begged leave to throw away an assured future as a prosperous farmer. And at last, worn down by his pleadings, the moth­ er consented. At 18, in 1660, Newton weat to Cambridge university. There he promptly went mathematic-mad. He discovered the binomial theorem and worked out the processes since employed as "Differential and Integ­ ral Calculus." -Before he reached the age of 27 he was professor pf mathe­ matics at Trinity college. Then the plague swept England, a scourging epidemic that wasted whole communities, paralyzed trade and progress, and killed men, women and children like flies. The dead were carried out of the cities each day by the hundred cartloads. Knowledge of medicine and of Discovers "Attrac- sanitatioi^ w a s tion Gravlta- limited and the outbreak could not be checked. " The colleges closed their doors. Newton, deprived for the time of occupation, returned to the Woolstrop farm. There, in enforced idleness, he spent many weeks. One day, as he sat under a tree in his mother's orchard, an apple fell to the ground, grazing his head as it passed. New­ ton started up from the doze into which he had drifted.. The fall of the apple set him to thinking. Why had it fallen? When it had become de­ tached from the limb why did it drop downward? Why did it not hang in air or fall in some other direction? What mysterious force drew all de­ tached bodies to the earth as a mag­ net draws particles of steel? Since the days of Adam apples had tumbled earthward. Yet no one except New­ ton had troubled to consider the rea­ son. The idle scholar set to work bn the problem offered, by this accident. Betsey Ross and the Rejected Flag We often read and hear the statement: "It la co be regretted that many of the fascinating narra­ tives of our colonial history are born of imagina­ tion, and among these are favorite stories, such as: "Captain John Smith's adventure with the Indi­ ans, Putnam's famous ride, Betsey Ross and our first flag, and Barbara FrSetchie at Frederick*- town." There is abundance of proof extended to verify that Betsey Ross lived, and that she was em­ ployed by the continental congress to manufacture flags, the government archives bear witness. Betser lioss' flag was first rejected and some time later accepted. Betsey Ross attended Christ church, Philadel­ phia, and the pew in which she worshiped was next to the one occupied by Washington, and her pew is marked by a brass plate bearing these words: "In this pew worshiped Betsey Rosa, who made the first flag." - Of late years the Journals, magazines, and school histories our country have called attention to the origin of our national flag as having been sug gested by the family arms of the Wasbingtons. This supposition comes from Martin Tupper, an eminent English poet and literateur. His first reference to our flag in this connection was made public in the fall of 1850. The announcement did not receive serious consideration until at a public banquet given in America. At this dinner, held in the city of Baltimore, the Idea was heralded to the world that the stars and stripes had their origin in the heraldic symbols of the Washington family. And the result of this study was the discovery of the great fact known as "The Attraction of Gravitation." Next he sought to connect this new discov­ ered "attraction" with the force which holds planets to their orbits and pre­ vents them from whizzing off into space. Galileo, years before, had proven that a falling body drops 16 feet the first second and with arith­ metically increased force for every subsequent second. Using v .this knowledge, Newton began to calculate the force necessary to hold the moon to its orbit around the earth. This, in spite of many dreary disappointments, he succeeded, after 16 years* struggle, in doing. He again startled the world and made for himself new foes by discov­ ering that rays of white light were not single in color, but were made up of countless rays of many colored light. From this followed a fresh working out of the theory of the rain­ bow and a masterly treatise oh op­ tics. Then came the heaviest misfortune of Newton's life. For 20 yea^s he had been at work on a scientific dis­ covery and had at last worked it to a completion. All the papers represent­ ing that 20 years of labor lay one evening on his Work of Twenty 3tudy table. His pet Years Destroyed. 3paniei° Diamond, leaped upon the table, and while frisk­ ing there upset one of the candles. Before Newton could run to the res- Cue the precious papers ^ were a charred, undecipherable mass of ashes. Instead of flying into a rage of bemoaning the loss he lifted the mischief-making cur gently to the ground, saying only: "Oh, Diamond, you little ^ Show what mischief you have done." Then he set calmly to work on the 20-year task again. But - the shock proved too much for his overstrained nerves. He broke-down mentally and physically. To make matters worse he was practically penniless. But with tardy generosity the gov­ ernment came to his relief. He was appointed warden of the royal mint, and so well did he discharge his duties that, in 1696, he was promoted to the office of mint master. Queen Anne, in 1705, made him a knight. Thus England waB sp'ared the eternal disgrace of allowing her greatest scientist to starve. In 1727, at the age of 85, Newton died. At his deathbed some fellow- scientists spoke in high praise of the dying man's profound wisdom. "Wisdom?" echoed Newton. "I feel like a child who, wandering along the shores of the boundless seas of learning, has merely picked up a few tiny shells." (Copyrighte&J SAMUEL JOHNSON-- Crank and Dictionary Maker. •; In the worst rainstorm of the sea­ son, one day in the middle of the eighteenth century, a man stood on a street corner of Lichfield, England. He was unprotected from the weather by so much as a great coat and wait­ ed meekly^ receiving the . deluge of rain and jeers of passersby. He was a giant in size and strength, enor­ mously fat and clad in shabby, soiled garb. His swollen, red face was blotched, scarred and distorted with scrofula and twitched uncontrollably, his great head rolled from side to side and he muttered constantly to himself. This strange figure was Dr. Samuel Johnson, greatest man of his day, and revolutionizer of the English language. His vigil in the rainstorm was but one of a thousand eccentric­ ities. As a lad he had rejused to go on an errand for his father one rainy day. Now 30 years later it had oc­ curred to him to take this queer way of atoninff for his boyish disobedi­ ence. <, Johnson was the son of an , old bookseller. He spent his boyhood reading ravenously every one of his father's books he could lay hands pn. He had the rare faculty of remember­ ing everything he read. At 19, though miserably poor, he went to Oxford. But his eccentricity, strange appear­ ance and overstrung nerves proved a great drawback. His wagging head, facial grimaces, slovenly, dirty clothes and -lineh Eccentricity and uncouth ways Wrecked Sue- macie a bad lm- ce8#* presslon. If he "were asked to a literary reception he was quite likely to create a diver­ sion by snatching off a lady's slipper or clawing her false hklr, or by sud­ denly shouting a line from the Lord's Prayer. At the few dinners he was invited to the half-starved genius ate ravenously, tearing his food like a wild beast and growling over it. The English tongue and English lit- . erature were growing. Certain - ety­ mologies and lexicons were in use, but the language had no dictionary worthy of the name. Several book­ sellers combined and hired Johnson to compile, in two volumes, a com­ plete dictionary of the English lan­ guage. For this mammoth work he was allowed seven years' times and $4,500. He was obliged to employe a small army of lesser writers to help him, and this quickly ate up his profits. He had no rich patron, as had most writers of the time, for he could not truckle to the great. * He worked on in poverty. His wife died, leaving him alone in the world. These ft/1* * < PUTS CRIMP IN PIANO FIEND $cliame of Long-Suffering Couple Re­ sulted In Considerable Abate­ ment of Nuisance. "We've found a Joyful way to stop the continual playing of a piano in the below us," said a young matron do a girl friend. "Unfortunately, the remedy is only applicable when the nuisance is in the flat below one, so I'm it won't do other people much good. However, it has been most efficacious in our own case. "Every evening about 5:80, I think it is, wheiPthe man of the house gets home, some one starts this fearful tin- panny piano going, and they are ac­ customed to keep it up at frequent intervals all evening until we get tired of <0, Gee, Be Sweet to Me Kid' and that sort of music that we almost grow mad. The other evening we had two friends to dinner, and when the music down stairs had been going for some tin»$ ens of our frie&ds suggest- ed that we make use of it and have a dance. The idea no sooner took root than we had the rugs up and were doing, the merriest barn dance you ever saw, and we took little care to tread softly. It was not long before the music ceased, and it wag SOJXiC- thing like en hour before they began to play again. Almost at the same time, even though we were in the mid­ dle of our salad, we got up and began IM "fSv i 'i> to two-step, with the result that again the music stopped. Even if we were a little delayed with our dinner, we had put an end to the abominable music, and, incidentally, we had better appetites for the dessert and cheese. Now every time they begin George and I dance as hard as we can to the music, and the consequence is we are more peace in our own ( Then Turn to Another. When you have set yourself tft a task, finish it.--Ovid. were the darkest yews of Johnson's life. His mother, wliom he had sup­ ported out of his lean purse, also died, and to pay her funeral expenses he wrote his great philosophical novel "Rasselas." Then, in 1755, appeared his great dictionary. It was not only the first real English dictionary ever pub­ lished, but the clearness, scope and beautiful language of its definitions formed a new literary era and caused a revoltulon in literature. Now that he was «uccesifii3* the world flocked to do him homage. A coterie of writers, actors and states­ men formed about him. He was their oracle and idol. With pompous superi­ ority he tyrannized over them, bullied them, lec- Spolled by Pros- ture(j them, made parity. them listen in re­ spectful silence to his endless ora tions. At the Cheshire Cheese and other places of the kind he was wont to hold a species of semi-regal court, with himself as undisputed king and despot. He grew indolent, shunned work of all sorts a.nd lived on his pastjeecord. In earlier years he had railed at the custom of pension giv ing, styling it "pay given to a state hireling to betray his country." Yet when the new monarch, George III., offered him a pension of $1,500 a year Johnson promptly accepted. At about this time he met James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer Johnson hated Scotland, but took a fancy to Boswell, saying in explana­ tion: "Much may be done with Scotchman if he is caught young." Boswell religiously took down all Johnson's epigrams and later pub­ lished his recollections of the great lexicographer in one of the most fas­ cinating biographies ever written. Johnson filled his house with beg­ gars and decayed gentlefolk, whom he supported and who quarelled among themselves and bullied their benefac­ tor as he bullied the world. But at length these mendicants died, as did many of Johnson's closest friends. Alone in the world, embit­ tered, and suffering from a combina­ tion of fatal maladies, the man who had revolutionized the English lan­ guage, and who feared death with a terror almost childlike in its unrea­ sonableness, died on December 13, 1784, leaving an unparalleled record of long and successful battle against circumstances, and standing out for­ ever as the oddest, most picturesque figure la the world of letter*?? ' » (Copyrighted.) Abdul the Damned's Graveyard. An English wrecking company was employed to recover something lost overboard in the Bospuorus near the palace of Abdul the Damned. Two divers who were sent down from a boat to make the search signaled in­ stantly to be drawn to the surface, and when they were on deck refused to perform the work. They declared that on the bottom their feet weighted to hold them down and keeping them .erect, there was a veritable forest of bodies, swaying with outstretched hands as the waters moved them, in an indescribably terr.ifying spectacle. It was Abdul the Damned's graveyard for enemies quietly shuffled of the earth, perhaps even |jpr discarded beauties of the harem Of whom ho had grown tired. if.."- •• . To Prevent Scaie In Boilers. tfc fluasian engineer claims to pre­ vent scale in boiiera by Introducing a small amount of linseed oil in a per­ forated tank, from which the oil pw colates to the surface of the water. CHARLES. W. DOUGLAS KEALL • 1? F1RHT TRA1N DISPATCHtR. , T^lVas the Originator of Reading Tele*-. - flraphlc Messages by 8ound,*nd . < Hose to High PositionJ on Lines. Charles W. Douglas, the first train- dispatcher, died a short time ago ifej Wayne, N. J., and was buried in Port > Je rv Is. Charles. Minot, first ge»-^ eral superintend-*! ent of the Erie» who originated in 1851 the system of moving trains by telegraph, created : a new railroad op­ erating department, that of train diji?% patcher, and appointed Douglas as tbft; head of the department. Douglas was the last of the tela* graph operators who learned the busi ­ ness on the pioneer lines constructed by Ezra Cornell 60 years ago. Hay* 1 ing learned the printer's trade in Aft* gelica, N. Y., he started out to "Seek1 V- work elsewhere. He found it in the office of the Recorder at Dundee, ' Y. This was in 1849. Cornell had recently extended his telegraph line through that part of the state and • had established an office in the print­ ing shop at Dundee. Douglas learned to operate the Morse instrument. In 1851--the Erie telegraph line having been put in oeration, with headquar­ ters at Elmira--Douglas, then 19, ap­ plied for a place as operator and got charge of the Erie office a| Addison/ N. Y. Soon afterward the telegraphic system of runniug trains was adopt­ ed by Minot. • P The Morse alphabet characters were in those early days of telegraph­ ing perforated on. a tape as, the mes­ sage came to an operator, which un-.' wound from a reel, and the operator copied the message from the tape as it unwound. Douglas had not been long in the service when he dlscotf ered that he could translate the mes­ sages by sound, and he ignored th# tape thereafter. One day a conduo- ,! tor was waiting at Addison for train orders and he discovered that DouaK las was paying no attention to the dot* » and dashes on the tape. «: The conductor refused to accept the order until Douglas had copied it la - his prejrfence from the tape. - Although it corresponded exactly with the mes­ sage the operator had taken by sound, the conductor reported the unheard of act to telegraph headquarters. Douglas was called there for repri­ mand, but he gave to the superintend­ ent, who was the late L. O. Tillotson.' t)f New York, such convincing exhibi­ tion of his ability to take messages correctly by sound that he was pro- * moted to the general office. Although the tape attachment to telegraph in-~ struments was not abandoned for years, from that innovation of Doug­ las in railroad telegraphy dated the beginning of the taking of messages by sound as a requisite of all opera­ tors. i No other railroad had yet adopted the telegraph system of train running orders and none adopted it for sev­ eral years, the Delaware & Lacka­ wanna being the second railroad to establish it as part of its regular op­ erating system in 1856. The men who dispatched trains on the Erie were their own operators and no central head had knowledge of the position of trains anywhere on the road. The danger of thi? arrangement appealed to Superintendent Minot, and when t h e a b i l i t y o f y o u n g D o u g l a s c a m e t o , his knowledge he made him chief dis­ patcher of the Delaware division and subsequently originated and estab­ lished the department of train dis­ patching and made Douglas its head. Douglas thus became the first train dispatcher in the world. DouglaS rose to be superintendent of the Delaware division of the Erie, succeeding Hugh Riddle, who succeed­ ed Minot as general superintendent in 1869. Douglas and Riddle resigned after a quarrel with Jay Gould. Riddle went west, entered the serv- • • Ice of the Chicago, Rock Island & Par cific, and rose to be president of that company. Douglas subsequently be­ came general manager of the Sotfth- ' side railroad of Long Island, and later general superintendent of the New York & Oswego Midland, now the New York, Ontario & Western. When the late Vice-President Garret A. Ho- bart was made receiver of the New York & Greenwood Lake railroad he appointed Douglas superintendent of the road, from which place he re­ signed to become part owner and gen- er'al manager of the New York & Sen Beach railroad and the Sea Beach Pal­ ace, one of the pioneer show places and hotels on Coney Island. When those interests were absorbed by oth­ ers Douglas became manager of the Erie Express Company, which was aft­ erward purchased by the Wells, Far­ go Company. Since then Douglas had been engaged in general railroad work- | - | -- * . . Good Emergency Brake. All English railroad official^ ton-upon-Trent has devised an emer­ gency rail groove brake, which has been used with great success on the municipal line of which he is an em­ ploye. This is an emergency mechan­ ical brake additional to and entirely independent of any other equipment on the cay. It is instantaneous in ac­ tion and has no graduations; when applied it must be at maximum brak­ ing effort. No expenditure of power pr sand is required for its applica­ tion. A malleable iron bracket*is at­ tached to the track frame, inside the wheel base and close to coach wh&el flange. This bracket supports through a compression spring and pair of links, a malleable iron block carry­ ing a renewable manganese steel skltf shoe of a shape to conform to the rail' groove. The brake is held away from the track by a steel wire or cable, so that when this Is released the compressed spring forces the skid bar into the groove. The brake block also engages the wheel flange and Is forced downward with additional pres­ sure. Only the brakes o^ the rear wheels are released. • -V- sap