were built for them in France upon American plans. This shows what
wide-awake, intelligent persons the King and Queen of Portugal are. They
are not particularly afraid of dynamiters or any other kind of
assassins, and although poor--among kings--they manage to have a fairly
good time on wheels.
In planning the royal train King Charles of Portugal went so far in his
Americanism as to demand vestibuled platforms. Of course, any one may
ride in a vestibuled train in our country by simply paying a few
dollars, but in Europe it takes a king of strong will power to obtain
such luxury.
The royal train of Portugal consists of a dining-car, a car for the
royal ministers, etc., and the car especially reserved for the King and
Queen. All three are of the size and general appearance of high-class
American cars. Outside their color is a dark rich green, relieved with
tracings of gold and red. The escutcheon of the royal arms of Portugal
is painted in the middle of each side. The dining-car is fitted up in
the style of Louis XV. The table can be folded and put away when not in
use. The interior ornamentation of carved oak, amaranth, citron-wood,
etc., is very rich indeed. Next to the dining-room is the smoking salon,
where the King, or even Queen Amelia, may relieve the monotony of travel
with a cigarette.
There are four sleeping-rooms in the royal car besides rooms for the
attendants. The most remarkable thing about this car is the dais and
divan at one end of the salon. No one may sit on this raised divan but
the King or the Queen. A drapery of silk velvet forms the background.
Above the back of the divan the royal arms are carved. Probably it
diverts his Majesty's mind to sit here on high now and then while
journeying and call his ministers around him and ask them questions and
make wise comments, as Kings always do--in certain books.
Downright worry drove Czar Alexander III. of Russia to his death. Taller
and stronger than any of his subjects, not one of whom could cope with
him in wrestling, this imperial giant was actually tormented into his
grave by fears of nihilistic plots to destroy him. Nowhere was this fear
greater than when on railroad journeys. Again and again Alexander
abandoned long trips at the last moment because the nihilists had
learned his plans, and there was reason to believe that they had dug
mines under the railroad track and were ready to blow him and his train
to fragments. His son has not been on the throne long enough, the
nihilists say, for them to decide whether or not they shall try to kill
him.
Alexander's train was a fort on wheels. It was built in 1889, two years
after a terrible underground explosion of dynamite, which wrecked the
Czar's train at Borki, when he was on his way from the Crimea to St.
Petersburg with the Empress and their family. In that accident
twenty-one persons were killed and thirty-six were wounded, but not one
of the imperial family was injured. The Czar showed himself a brave man
by going to the aid of the wounded as soon as he could climb out of the
wreck. All the cars in the train were of wood.
The new train of 1889 was made of wood too, but the cars were armored.
The outside of each car was of heavy iron, inside of which was a layer
of eight inches of cork. All of the four cars in the train were exactly
alike outwardly, so that a nihilist would find it hard to pick out the
Czar's car should he by any accident get within shooting distance. When
the Czar travelled he often spent his time in a car that was so built
and painted as to look like a baggage-car from the outside. When the
Czar visited Emperor William III., at Berlin, in October, 1889, six
Russian workmen put gratings of wrought-iron at the tops and bottoms of
all the chimneys of the old Schloss and palace at Potsdam, which the
Czar occupied. This was to keep out nihilists' bombs. Armed sentries
patrolled the roofs. When the Czar started for home all the railroad
bridges, as well as the streets of Berlin, Marienburg, and Dantzic, were
guarded by soldiers, policemen, and detectives. Not until after the Czar
left Dantzic was it known whether he had proceeded by train or on the
imperial yacht _Derjava_. When the train started for the border 50,000
Russian troops were placed on guard along the railroad tracks. Every
journey the unhappy ruler made was attended by similar precautions.
[Illustration: THE FRENCH PRESIDENT ON THE WAY FROM VERSAILLES.]
When Francais Felix Faure, the newly-elected President of the French
Republic, made his first railroad journey after election, he found that
being a mere President is almost as unpleasant as playing king. For fear
of anarchists a strong force of soldiers and four sappers and miners
guarded each of the railway bridges and grade crossings between
Versailles and Paris. Extra policemen and a little army of five hundred
detectives watched the palace in which the National Assembly sat. A
strong battalion of lancers and more foot soldiers than you could count
escorted the new President to the special train in waiting at Versailles
at 8 o'clock on Friday morning, January 18th. Fortunately no anarchist
got a shot at the President as he was whirled along, but as he emerged
from the St. Lazare railway station in Paris voices in the crowd yelled
at him, "Down with the check-takers!"--a pointed hint that M. Faure was
implicated in the Panama Canal scandal.
A CORRECTION.
"I've dot two Movver Gooses,"
Said Mollie. "If you please,"
Said Johnny, "Don't say Gooses,
Because it's Mother Geese."
DR. RAINSFORD'S ADVICE TO BOYS.
When we were boys we did things without thinking much about them. Boys
do not generally think much; yet I think even when I was a boy I found
myself sometimes wondering why it was so hard to do the things I wanted
to do well. It was ever so much harder, of course, to do well the things
that one did not specially want to do. I want to talk to you a little
about the reason that lies back of this difficulty of doing things well.
When I was thirteen my father gave me a gun. That birthday long ago is
one of the very reddest of red-letter days in my life. I have had many a
good time since; but none of these good times, I think, have quite come
up to that hour, so full of astonishment and delight, when I saw the
very thing I had been longing for and dreaming about so long--saw the
soft-looking brown barrels lying snugly against the green-baize lining
of the case, and felt the ring of the lock under my fingers as I drew
the hammers of my own gun back. (Those were the days of muzzle-loaders,
boys.) But when I had got that gun--the desire of my eyes, the pride of
my life--it was, oh, how long, before I could hit things flying with it.
On Saturday half-holidays (we had only one half a holiday a week when I
was at school), I used to practise steadily. All my savings went to
shot, powder, and wads. I almost lost the desire for candy with its
disuse. I even turned my back on the pond where we used to fish for
roach. I had seen my father kill birds flying, one with each barrel, and
there was neither rest nor satisfaction for me till I could do the same.
I think I took to shooting naturally; yet how long it was, and how hard
I had to work, before I learned to shoot steadily and well.
It was the same story over again when I had grown older and gone to
college. There I determined to row. If ever you are in old England in
May, go, if you can, to Oxford or Cambridge, if it is only to see the
college races. The river-banks then are green, so green, and the hedges
and trees are one waving nosegay. The big buttercups grow in yellow
bunches by the brink. Where the meadows slope down to the stream crowds
of gayly dressed people are standing, for the sisters and friends of
every college lad have come up to see the sight. This is on one side of
the river; on the other stretches the towing-path, and along it surge a
mighty throng of "men" clad in all the colors of the rainbow, wild with
excitement, shouting themselves hoarse. They are out to see their
college crew row. And what a sight those crews are! Round the bend, here
they come at last, the eight-oar crews, the men's bodies swinging like
pendulums, the eight pair of hands dropping at the end of each stroke as
one, and then shooting out altogether. With a sweep and a swish they
dash by, and the rushes of college color struggle to keep up with them.
Ah, the very memory of it makes me thrill still! When first I saw their
ease and splendid strength, how simple it looked. Surely, any fairly
strong man could make those broad-bladed oars come swishing through,
leaving behind them, well below the surface, a clear track of white
water. So it seemed to me, and I determined there and then, that first
May morning, I too would row. But I tell you it costs something to sit
in a good eight-oar. Long months of hard work, obedience to orders, and
patient drudgery have to be undergone before the broad-bladed oar comes
swishing through as I have tried to describe it. Your back aches, your
wrists feel limp as wet strings, and your chest is absolutely bursting,
and yet you do not seem to be able to put one good stroke in; the boat
slips away from you all the time. So for weeks and months runs your
daily experience. But when the rudiments of rowing are mastered at last,
when patient attention and hard exercise have made you strong, and
taught you when and where to use your strength, then comes the reward.
And whatever delightful experiences life may have in store for you, few
indeed of them can surpass the exhilaration, the sense of triumphant
power, that none know, perhaps, so well as those who have rowed on a
first-class eight-oar crew.
Do you see what I am driving at? I have been talking of our pleasures,
the things we want to do and choose to do. These, I say, cost us
trouble, and a great deal of care and painstaking. If any boy thinks he
can command success, even in his sports, without putting into them all
the will and all the brains, as well as all the brawn, he has as his
own, he must soon find himself left out in the cold. At best he can only
be a second-rate. Now this law of life, namely, that you must work hard
to succeed in anything, does not apply to us, who are lords of creation,
alone. One of the most wonderful things about our world is that the
rules of the game of life are obeyed by the smallest atom that lives as
well as by "king man" himself. If any living thing neglects or disobeys
those rules, that disobedient being, whether it be common or low,
suffers for its disobedience. If it obeys those rules, it grows stronger
by obedience, and increases and develops its own power.
Let me tell you one or two instances of obedience by the creatures round
us to these hard rules of life.
Have you ever seen a little salmon? A dainty, plucky little fellow he
is. It takes him two years to grow from the egg to your finger's length.
These two years of babyhood are spent in the quiet waters of his river
home. By the time the second summer is passed he is about five inches
long, golden-sided, with bright crimson spots, and weighs perhaps two
ounces. Then he starts on his first great journey to waters unknown. No
one knows where he goes, what lonely places he visits, where in the
great sea the little adventurer makes his winter home. Certainly the
Arctic Ocean is not too cold for him, for the waters of the far
Mackenzie, emptying themselves into the polar sea, swarm with salmon;
but wherever the little fellow does winter, the climate, food, and life
must agree with him amazingly. He goes seaward in August. Next summer he
is back in the same old river; and not only that, but in the very pool
in it where he was hatched out. He is the same, but not the same; for
now he weighs from three to five pounds. In the river it took him two
years to grow five inches and weigh two ounces. In those six months of
sea life he has gained at least twenty-four times his own weight. There
is a reward for you! He felt he ought to go away and fight it out in the
great sea. He went, he fought, he won, and now he revisits the old river
a very different fish indeed. There is no longer any reason why he need
lurk behind stones and dash aside to avoid the rush of the voracious
trout. The very trout that once tried to gobble him must move out of the
way, for he is almost a salmon. What has made him the strong beautiful
fish he is? One thing, and one only--the struggle with the deep sea, and
all the deep sea means. If he had been content to stay behind his
fellows in the warm clear river he would be scarcely any bigger than he
was last fall. His red spots would not be quite so bright, nor he
himself so vigorous. Nature whispered to him to go forth and strive and
grow, and since he obeyed her, and did his best, she kept her word with
him.
Have you ever tried to crawl up on a bunch of wild ducks, or sat behind
a blind while your wooden decoys were spread on the water all around
you? If you have done either, I know you will agree with me when I say
the wild duck is a very smart fellow indeed. His eye is keen, he is full
of sense, and very hard to fool. Now his cousin, the tame duck, is next
door to an idiot. He cannot hide himself or protect himself in any way.
Strangely enough, too, while the wild duck finds one wife and one family
quite all he can attend to, the big, hulking tame duck is a regular
Mormon, and prefers a dozen wives, and neglects his children sadly. It
is not hard to guess why these two birds are so different. The tame duck
is only a wild duck domesticated, that is, put in such a position that
he could not continue to live the natural sort of life that was best for
him, the life of continuous struggle. He is, in short, a degenerate wild
duck; his wings are not so broad or so strong, the muscles of his breast
have grown puny and shrunken; he does not even want to fly far north in
spring or far south in winter. He is content with his farm-yard and
puddle. He has stopped _trying_, and so has stopped _growing_ too.
One more instance I will give you, boys, of the important place this law
of struggle plays in the lives of the very beasts. I was visiting some
time ago the museum in one of our universities. One of the professors
was with me, and we came to a case full of plaster casts of brains, the
brains of animals. While looking at these you could, of course, easily
compare their size and character, and form some opinion of the
intelligence of the animal itself. The professor pointed out to me one
very interesting brain cast. It was taken from the head of a rhinoceros
that had lived very long ago--lived at the same time as mammoths and
other antiquated animals. It was quite a large and well-developed brain.
We next went to another case and took out the cast of a common
rhinoceros, such a one as lived in our own times, and it was very
evident that the present-day rhino was not nearly so large or
intelligent as his progenitor of long ago. This seemed at first very
strange; for why should the rhino's brain have degenerated while they
are still struggling forward in the march of life? The answer is to be
found in the sort of battle they have to fight. When the antediluvian
rhino lived, the world was peopled with terrible monsters, brutes of
great strength and savagery. With these he had no easy time of it. He
had to match himself against them. Great strength alone was not enough;
he needed cunning as well. Struggle he must, and struggle hard or go
under; and he survived because he did struggle hard and did not go
under. When, however, most of the monstrous forms of life had gradually
passed away, the rhinoceros had no enemy he stood much in dread of. The
milder animals of a later day get out of his way. There is nothing to be
gained by contending with him. He needs no longer to strive; life comes
easily, and food is plenty. Thus it is that a perpetually "good time"
resulted in weakening his head and lowering his intelligence. He is,
indeed, the degenerate descendant of a noble parent.
So, boys, wherever we look, the same result is taught us. The very
beasts of the field can only hold their own by doing their best. We,
their kings and lords, must put our right hand to the work, too. We can
only live our best life, develop our true self, by striving. The tallest
and strongest trees are what they are because they have overcome the
mighty force of gravitation that seeks to drag down and hold down to the
earth every particle of matter within them. Life, even in the tree,
means something that _overcomes_, rises above a force that holds it
down; and yet only holds it down that its most beautiful and best nature
may be developed to the full. So it is with us men. The brave man is not
he who never felt fear. If a man is intelligent he must, under fearful
circumstances, feel fear; but he who, feeling fear, overcomes his
feeling and stands unmoved, or does in spite of danger the right and
brave thing--this man has true courage, this man is the real hero. You
may have heard the story of the officer who, when the cannon balls began
to cut down files of his men, stood all trembling in front of the
regiment. It looked as though he was terribly afraid. His knees were
shaking under him, and his face was set and white. Some one standing
near heard him talking to himself, heard him say, as he looked down at
his trembling legs, "If you only knew where I was going to take you, you
would give way altogether." That, I take it, is true courage. On the
walls of a great school-room in one of the largest public schools in
England is written this motto--and you cannot find a better:
"So near is glory to our dust,
So near is God to man;
When Duty whispers, 'Lo, thou must!'
The youth replies, 'I can.'"
W. S. RAINSFORD.
* * * * *
BOBBY'S GARDEN.
BOBBY. "I have just finished digging and raking my garden, and now I
want five cents."
MAMMA. "What, five cents for making your garden?"
BOBBY. "No, mamma, not for making the garden, but to buy a package of
succotash seed."
[Illustration: THE CAMERA CLUB]
This Department is conducted in the interest of Amateur
Photographers, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any
question on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should
address Editor Camera Club Department.
PAPERS FOR BEGINNERS, No. 8.
OVER-EXPOSED PLATES, AND HOW TO TREAT THEM.
The process of developing a negative would be very easily and quickly
mastered if the exposure of the sensitive plates were always timed
exactly right. Correct exposure, however, is the exception rather than
the rule of amateur photography. To get good negatives, therefore, the
amateur must learn to distinguish between a correct and incorrect
exposure of the plate, and how to treat it, if incorrectly exposed, in
order to preserve the image which is impressed on it.
Over-exposure is the most common fault of the beginner in photography. A
properly exposed plate grows into a negative step by step, until the
whole image, with all its delicate gradations of lights and shadows, is
fully developed. An over-exposed plate acts in a very different manner.
When placed in the developer, instead of the high lights first appearing
and the objects coming out gradually, the whole image comes out almost
at once--"flashes up" is the technical and really appropriate term. If
the plate is left in the developer, the image will fade away almost as
quickly as it came out, and the result will be a thin negative, from
which satisfactory prints cannot be made.
TREATMENT.
As soon as the image flashes up, showing that the plate has been
over-exposed, take it from the developer and place it in a dish of clean
water to stop development. Turn the developer from the tray and rinse
the tray. Mix up a weak solution of developer, or dilute this same
developer one-third with water. Add to this weak developer a few drops
of a solution of bromide of potassium, prepared with a quarter of an
ounce of bromide of potassium and five ounces of water. This solution
should be mixed and kept always ready for use. Label the bottle
"Restrainer." The bromide is called a restrainer, as it makes the
development of the image proceed more slowly.
Put the plate back in the tray, and turn the developer, to which the
bromide has been added, over it, rocking the plate gently. Watch the
development closely, and if the image still comes up too fast add a few
more drops of bromide. Unless the plate has been very much over-exposed,
by taking it from the developer and using the restrainer carefully, a
good negative can usually be obtained. If the plate has been too much
over-exposed, there is no way of saving it.
If one knows or thinks that a plate has been over-exposed, the plate
should not be put in a normal developer--that is, a developer which
would be used for a correctly exposed plate--but it should be put into
the weak developer to which bromide has been added.
Some amateurs, in developing, have three trays of developer. The first
tray contains normal developer, the second tray contains developer
prepared for over-exposed plates, and the third for under-exposed
plates.
If a plate is found to be under or over exposed, it is washed and
removed to the tray containing the proper solution. This is a very good
plan if one has a quantity of plates to develop which have been exposed
at different times and under different circumstances, as it saves
preparing fresh developer after development has been started.
SIR KNIGHT FRANK KANE asks what is meant by a flat negative. A
flat or thin negative is one which has been over-exposed, and not
sufficiently developed to give the necessary density, so that the
light passes through all parts quickly, and gives a flat picture,
wanting in contrast. The next number of the ROUND TABLE will give
methods for strengthening or redeveloping thin negatives.
[Illustration: THE RAINBOW TABLE.]
A RAINBOW TEA.
BY MARY J. SAFFORD.
Suggestions for pretty effects at church fairs are always in order, and
one which I attended recently was so attractive in its arrangements, and
so well carried out in every detail, that a description may be of
service to those who are planning a sale.
Even the tickets were in harmony with the remainder of the decoration.
They bore diagonally across the centre, the upper left-hand and the
lower right-hand corners, a rainbow, while the lettering ran:
RAINBOW TEA.
IN AID OF
_The_............................................
_At_.............................................
Admission, 25 cents.
Entering the room one saw directly opposite to the door the seven
tables, each representing one of the colors of the rainbow. All were the
same length and width, covered with the pretty, inexpensive crepe cloth,
and bordered with a frill of crepe-paper the same shade. From the end of
each table ran a width of the crepe cloth, through whose centre was a
strip of satin ribbon the same shade about four inches wide. These
extended to a small square table and fastened on the top. This table was
placed midway between the red and the violet one, which stood on the
same line, perhaps six feet apart, the other five tables being set
between in the order of the colors of the rainbow, the green at right
angles with the red and the violet, and the remainder slanting. The
effect of the semicircle was extremely pretty, and it also afforded room
for attendants and buyers to gather around the lower ends of the
respective tables.
The central ornament of each was a banquet-lamp, corresponding in color
with the table on which it stood; that on the red one had a red
porcelain vase in an iron stand, with a red shade; the green lamp had a
green pillar and green shade; the yellow table bore a brass lamp, etc.
The red, orange, and violet tables contained a bewildering variety of
articles for sale, and it was an interesting study to note the ingenuity
with which the respective colors had been introduced into the
fancy-work, painted china, etc., displayed to tempt purchasers.
On the orange table, for instance, were small gilded straw baskets,
filled with delicious home-made molasses candies, tiny emery-cases
covered with brown velvet, and surrounded by petals cut from deep yellow
cloth, perfectly representing the daisylike flower known as "black-eyed
Susan," sunflower penwipers, handkerchief-cases, made by folding an
embroidered handkerchief over a square of yellow perfumed silk, the four
corners meeting in the centre, laundry-bags, embroidered with yellow
silk, sachet-cases with yellow buttercups strewn over them, teacups
decorated with gold, etc.