The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 20, 1896, Page 19

/ THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1896. Culver Pictures Some of the Exceedingly Prosy Realities of the N\ A \ o Wt WA A\ oA\ —— \ T WELL, More Do You Mow-MucH § 1 WANT, /\Y DEAR? A AN A N COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR” ] 99 17 Christmas Season YES, GRANDPA DIDTh& SHOPPING. Cahill's Sketches in the Top Ga]léry 4 CAN'T see anything in them new- 7 fangled plays, said the old sat quite s and watche move the villain made, nevertheless, just as though he were taking a great deal of interest in it. But there were others in the gallery that night, and so'faras I could see the old man’s face wore the only immobile, exp sionless look in the entire family circle. If you want to catch a g pse of unadul- terated human natore, see it swayed bither and thither, backward and forward, as it were, throughout. the entire gamut | £ man emotions, spend an evening | the gallery gods when there is an | chool melodrama on the boards. i t is hard to tell which is the unreal | rild, whethert stage .or the gallery. | Indeed they work in entire harmony and | sympathy throughout the entire play, if; | -5 | b | | | A= f i NT OF DEEP SUSPENSE L1} / A Mo™ | watch bis face rather than the stage, for I | only the sentiment of the play be right | and there is enough ‘aciing” to satisfy | the somewhat critical taste of the true| connoisseurs of the melodrama. Of course | the villain must be foiled at last, orthe | - top gallery, &8 a rule, will thin out before | the week 1s over. And there must be| nothing mawkish about ‘the sentimental | scenes in the play, for those who sit in the | top gallery may turn from gods 1o de- | mons, and a long, low hiss from the gallery | is as effective as from any ether part of the house. The pathos must be measured | carefully, and must be of an intensely | human kind, or else instead of tears there | is liable to be laughter in the gallery. What pleases most of these allery gods | is the old Miiton Noble or Dion Bouci- cault five-act drama, with a sure enough | villain always on the trail of the fair hero- | ine and the brave and gallant hero until | the last scene in the last act. You do| tue gallery god an injustice, however, if | vou think he revels only in vulear gore and low comedy. Hisonly demandisthat the piay be one of genuine buman inter- est and that the language be outspoken and clear. He hates paradoxes and has | no stomach for the subtleties of expression | but littie schooled in the fashionable art | of suppressing natural sentiment, and you | and almost from the very opening lines | and. the far-fetched ir e Vicar of Wake- | ty ot plot, { and acton and omely out- | phraseology, is plenty good enough none too gocd to win the hearty ap- preciation of the family circle. I counted myself fortunate this night in 2 a seat on the front row of the top | y next to the old man, who could see ! “in them new-fangied plays.” But in order to gain this point of vantage both the'old man and myself, as well as | all the others, who ocgupied the front rows, bad to waitagood half hour be- tween the time of taking their seat and | the rising of the cartain: Ome can | “size vp,” casually, a good many oi one's | near-by neighbors in half an hour, and | one is mot apt.to miss the opportunity, | thereby the half-hour wait becomes one of | the most interesting events of the even- ing. These are all Dickens’ people up | here—men and women, boys and giris— | can see from their faces that when the curtain goes up the verdict rendered by the gallery urchins will be spontaneous and sincere. 1t i* no matter what the play was. There was a very beautifal heroine I it, the plot began to thicken. Now the hero comes on the stage, tall, handsome, dar- | ing and open-hearted. *I love you, Nora,” he cries; then in the distance crouchcs as black a scoundrel as ever a Dickens painted. There is a moment of deep suspense, and the young man who sits next to me has his bands on his knees, his face thrust forward, his mouth and eyes wide open. His nostrils dilated. There is an invisible yet certain magnetic current between him and the stage, and his heart peats as that current vibrates, now slowly, now fiercely. I prefer to know that the drama I read in his face is | a truer drama, and the emotions ex- | pressed by it far more spontaneous and | sincere than is the fictitious stage drama that causes them. Ican see now—watch- ing the play of moving passions upon those features—that at last the villain and the hero have met face to face. It will be | a war to the death, unless something in- tervenes, which, of course, it does, because the vplay must run till after 10 o’clock. Presently, I see by the darkening lines on that face tbat the villain is gaining ground. Then the curtain falis on the first act, and the young man heaves a long-drawn sigh that seems to come away up trom his boots. Now the hisses commence, and they are so vigorous and’ so long drawn out. that the villain makes his appearance in front of the curtain, bows, and is hissed back into the greenroom. In the second act the scene is atthe debthbed of the littlesister of the heroine, and I follow the heart beatings and illy- suppressed sobs of the motherly looking woman wbo sits almost facing on the ap- | ward arc of the semicircle. I know when the deepest chord of human sorrow has been toucbed, for now the motherly look- | ing woman can resirain herself no further. Her pocket handkerchief suddenly finds its was to her eyes, and by the time the | sad scene is all over and the curtain rings down upon the second act this real woman has had a ery that will do her good and make her beart lighter and her sympa- thies more kindly to the troubles of her neighbor on Natoma street. The feature of the third act is the rescue of the heroine by the hero. You should hear the encore that greets this denouement—you should hear it from the very midst of it, in order.to ap- preciate its velume, its depth, its honesty. There isa vibration of sincerity in it all that one loses when heard only from the parquet or dress-circle. Now the plot has | turned, now the bunted turns hunter. It is the villain whois now pursued. It is doubiful for a time—in the minds of the gallery gods-=whether the villain will be finaily captured. But, of course, he is, as really all villains are sooner or later, and now there is another encore for the hero that threatens to lift the roof. Downstairs the folks are getting on their idents of some of | wraps, and moving about disturbing one | another. But up .here in the top gallery the trance is not broken. here is yet the epilogue to be spoken, and when at last it all ends happily, and when the hard old man has repented and given his consent to the union of hero and heroine, and the low comedy man has uttered his last gag, the expression of supreme happiness and contentment that settles down upon the faces of my friends in the top gallery, is something far more pleasing to me than even the foiling of the villain. I have passed an entrancing evening, have wit- nessed a play that noteverybody takes the trouble tosee, and I know that my friends, the galiery gods, are the better citizens. the truer men and women, for the chords thdt have been struck upon emotions and sentiments that a work-a-day world soon dulls and extinguishes. were recovered (which in the form of a cube would be about one and a quarter | inches square), it would gild a wire long enough to compass the whole earth like a hoop. If you pick up a goldleaf, such as is used | for gilding purposes, it becomesa curiosity | in your eyes when you realize that seventy- five square inches of it weigh only one | grain. Now the thousandth part of a line | or inch is easily visible through a common pocset-glass. Henoe it follows that when | gold is reduced to the thinness of gold- | leat, 1-50,700,000 of & grain of gold may be | distinguished by theeye. Bat it is claimed | that 1-140,000,000 of a grain of gold may be rendered visible. gilding portions of extériors of public and private buildings. Fer instance, if we take the Chureh of St. Isaac at St. Peters- burg, we find that it required the use of 247 pounds of gold to gild its five crosses. They can be seen glittering at a aistance | of twenty-seven miles.—Harper's Round Table. ‘e VILLAIN IS FOILED AT LAST Gold and Its Uses. If the average reader or thinker will devote a few minutes to the subject of gold and its uses, and bow much of itan- nuaily disappears by wear, -leaving no possible frace, he will find himself in- volved in some exiremely interesting cal- culations. If some genius would only in- vent a power strong enough to attract to it the millions of invisible particies that have and are constantly being worn off the various articles composed of that metal what an immense amount would be recovered! A Where do these varticles go? Here, there, everywhere, in your house, on the streets, in the banks, business houses, stores and wherever man goes. As an instance of this the following is cited: There is at present a veritable gold mine being worked in an old watch-case factory in Brookiyn. It occurred to the new purchasers of this property that during the long years of manufacturing of gold watch cases that took piace there, a large quantity of gold particles must have been absorbed by the flooring, walls, furnace chimney, etc. So they went carefully to work and tore ihe old building down bit by bit, and burnt and crushed the material, afterward assayinz the ashes. So far something like $50,000 has been recovered. Say an ounce oi this lost gold were re- covered. If we melted it down and gilded a fine silver wire it would extend more than 1300 miles; or, if ninefeen ounces Larze quantities of gold are used In |» CAN'T SEE ANYTHING ‘IN NEW-FANGLED PLAYS navies of the world, the standing | of tbe naval powers was, last July, as | follows: England, France, Russia, Ger- many, Italy and United States. D The order of precedence.is evidently based on the number.of sea-going armored ships; without regard to their compara- tive efficiency, and omn .this basis the United States must be content to remain at the bottom of the list a few years more. 7, CCORDING to a Parliamentary re- '%mm by the British Admiralty on l | France,. ' CRUISERS. CouNTRY. | Protected. |Unprotected. Tons. England . 0 Kussia. German: Italy... De- | Special Ves- | temse. s seis. No.| Tons. |18/ 1 90,532/ 185999/ 131898, 43,861 Tons. 465,080 263,045 i Ge 37.080 | Traty . 49,624 | Uniled Siates. AXMORED SHIPS. | Tonms. CouNTRY. Batueships,| Armored | xngiena | 15.660 | Crmsers. | Fiance. | 5991 | Rassi 4.315 Itaty L LI TORPEDO CRAFT. | TUP‘POGUY CouxtrY. Topeto | Boas - Desiroy ers. . Ne.| 1ous. 42| 11,000 /101 The number of ships aud tonnage, ex- clusive of torpedo-boats, is thus sum- marized: No. CouNTRY. | | Tons. 1,089,010 9. 257 109 | This apparent naval superiority of Germany and Italy over the United States is more imaginary than real, as an an- alysis of the individual armiored fleets wiil show. The battle-ships and armored cruisers of the United States are of guite the newest build, the oldest only four years in the water, and they are at least equal to similar ships of other navies of recent puild. In the German navy nine of the twenty-one battle-ships were built prior to 1880 and are obsclete in design and deficient 1n armor and armament. The twelve comparatively new ships range from 3440 to 9874 tons and aggre- gate only 68,728 tons, an average of 5727 tons, against the average of our ships of 8772tons. The heaviest guns on the Ger- man armored ships are only 1l inches, while our battle-ships carry 13 and 12 inch guns. Being smaller, the German ships have of necessity thinner armor and less coal-carrying capacity, which, coupled with lighter guns, would place them at a disadvantage with the American fleet. As for Italy, six of the battle-ships, ag- EEet] Standing of World's Naval Powers | gregating 47,466 tons, were built prior to 1880 (two being built in 1863), and may, therefore, be classed as back-numbers. Of the remaining seven armored ships of 32 tons, only two have beeu launched since 1890. The armor-piercing guns of these seven ships consists of sixteen 17- inch and twelve 12l4-inch guns. The | larger caliber, weighing 100 to 105 tons, | bave a penetration of 33 to 34 inchesof | iron at the muzzle, while the 13-inch gun in our navy, weighing only 6014 tons, will 1 penetrate 30 inchesof iron. Monster guns | are no longer built in any country for use | on board ships, and the tendency is to re- | duce the calibers to 12 inches and less, and all the 17-inch guns in the Italian navy are to be replaced with 10-inch rifles. When the question of coast-defense ves- sels is- considered, the United Statesis petter off than any of the other naval powers. In the Puritan, Monterey and four of the Monadnock class England has nothing to compare with these monitors. The coast-defeuse fleet of Great Britain is chiefly composed of antiquated ironclads no longer seaworthy, and there are at least thirteen carried on the list of battie-ships whos2 proper place is in the so-called coast-defense class, while such armored cruisers as the Warrior, Black Prince, Minotaur, Achilles, Agincourt and North- umbeérland, built between 1860 and 1866, have long outlived their usefulness and should be classed as coast-defenders with the other old iron. The coast-defense vessels of France are likewise a sorry lot with most formidable names. The six larger vessels of 4600 to 5900 tons are imitations of the American ! monitor, to which have been added enormous . superstructures, while the smaller craft are only armored gunboats. Russia’s coast defense appears to be composed of failures relegated to. retire- ment in the Black Sea. As for Germany, her coast-defense. fleet consists entirely of small armored gunboats built between 1876 and 1881. With modern guns the eight monitors of the Camanche class and five of the Pas- saic class could ably defend our harbors against attacks from the most formidabie sea-going battle-ships. In protected cruisers, it will be noted, the United States comes ahead of Russia and Germany, and in unprotected cruisers we lead Russia and Italy, In torpedo- vessels the United States is sadly deficient, and signally so in torpedo-boat destroyers and torpedo-boats. Of the two latter types a small beginning is now being made, but it will take many years, unless a war scare comes up, before our list will compare approximately in number with those abroad. And still navy-building is brisk all over the world, as will be seen from the follow- ing table of the several ciasses of ships un- der construction: ** £1eix 2 3 g H CLASSES OF VESSELS. < sa1mg DoY) Battle-shivs. . | Armored cruit Coass defense Protected cruis: "Torpedo vessels. T.-B. Destroyer Torpedo-boats. —ous 3 3 4 The srmored tonnage in course of con- struction in the several couaniries is as 1 1 o 1l follows: Engiand, 169,050; France, 65,019 ; Russia, 139,638; Germany, 34,010; Italy, 58,390; United States, 80,560. The only weak spot of our naval defense is in the lack of guns, and especially | quick-firing of 6-inch caliber and down- ward. In foreign navies the quick-firer is being rapidly installed, thus increasing the efficiency of the vessels at least three times. It takes apparently as much time to build the guns as it does to construct the ships, and Congress should make lib- eral appropriations for armaments. —_——— A doctor in the Highlands of Scotland, whose patients are scattered over a whole district, takes carrier-pigeons with him on his rounds and sends his prescriptions by them to the apothecary. He Ileaves pigeons, too, with distant families, to be let loose when his services are needed.