The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 12, 1906, Page 12

FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. New York, A S Statue of L on Bed- loe's Island is to be painted There seemed to be a good | al of what might be called t 1906 ug. 6. erty in this brief an- in the papers Who is golng to end why? t reach the age October—and the t of her sex seldom resort to this rent b week ago. fiss published Liberty d for restoring a faded ded brow until they fall e shadows of something like t. But a gi s—surely it must of twenty, | be the pace that kills t this.buxom maiden from Fr e has been treading during er brief career in the harbor of New Despite the suggesti n of premature | in the pigment- | however, Miss Lib- | sufficlent strength and | r daily public recep- | resolved to seize the op- | s offered to band | pligrims and interview the | of Uncle Sam’s choice on her de- parted charms and the somewhat | means that the said Uncle | threatens to employ for her re- | juve In son respects the er- rend might seem a bold one, but the fact that the lady in the case was un- able to answer back, owing to a con- genital weakness of the vocal chords, 1 'found to be ent To the benc ned tiona of patriot: on. of the Battery, Iberty looms up large | ové the distant shores of Jersey and | Staten Island, and the oft-repeated in- vitation of the starter to “take a trip | héad of the Statue of Liberty | #nd back for 25 cents” mever falls to | awaken an active curiosity and the | requisite number of recruits. Thus it | is'a distinctively “Battery crowd” that one usuzlly finds on the little steamer | ~a -gathering from many nations, & which the uptown New Yorker is cons spicuous by his absence. On particular trip, strange to #tate, I discovered that two San Fran- | s besides myself, together with a number of gaunt-looking tourists from | New Englana, a soore of Itallans, ¥Frenchmen, a few Spaniards and one stout, . flaxen-haired Swede, made the| trip an exception to the general rule. There is no doubt, as one of the Frenchmen sald, that Miss - Liberty, whien she left the hands of Bartholdl, had guite a different appearance from what she has taken on mow. I can |remember seeing her when she was a very young girl, indeed, and an alto- gether new figure in the bustle and | hurry of the harbor, where she has held her court for the last twenty | years. In those early days of her reign there was searcely a fleck or | a stain on her smooth surface, which was of one uniform dark bronze hue. But now the difference in tone is in- deed striking. One looks in vain, almost, for a ves- tige of the old bronze color. the torch, are enveloped in a of varylng shades of light green, deli- cate white, and a subtle dash of yel- low. The whole gives a marvelous harmony of'blended colors, the “beauti- the great Efnl touch of ze nature,” as the French- man put it, as striking as it is unique, | about which the artist and the utili- | tarian are bound to have endless dls- putes. For the question appears to be, Is this coat of many colors an artistic detriment and a menace to the further existence of the statue, and is the Gov- ernment justified in painting it ‘out, as the papers have announced it intends to do? There is no question as to the neces- | sity of some of the contemplated re- pairs in and around the statue. As we landed from the tugboat at the pler on Bedloe's Island there was nothing that suggested care or thought for the convenlence of visitors. A allapitated plank walk led up from the wharf to the terrace of earth crowned by the statue and its massive stone pedestal. This terrace is scaled by a broken flight of wooden steps, whose rickety condition might be taken by the fanciful as emblematic of the | dangers and toll to be encountered in the national which, march to - liberty, but to the more prosalc, might | simply mean plain neglect on the part of the caretakers of Bedloe's Island. The summit of the terrace h been | hollowea out as a trench for the ac- commodation of some half a dozen cannon, projecting seaward in different directions from the base of the statue. There are two trips that can be made up through the interior of the statue; | one leads to the crown on Miss Lib- erty’s brow, the other to the torch in her right hand. I made the trip to the | crown and it was met until my return to earth that I heard of the possibil- ities of the torch as a mode of upward motion. This torch route is not open to the general public, and I was very glad on the whole that I was thus counted Instead | the draperies, the features of the face, | | the heaq, book, | singular mantle | |among the exempts after I had ex- plored Miss Liberty’s crown. Imagine a pitch-black hole measuring | 185 steps from top to bottom, narrow and without ventilation, and you get more or less of an adequate idea of the ascent and descent to and from | Mtss Liberty's crown. The little iron stalrway by which one makes the trip is not more than a foot and a half wide, and takes a spiral upward turn at | every step in a way that is decldedly disconcerting to those who know the | meaning of seasickness. Some time ago I found out after mekipg the as- cent, the interior of the statue had been dimly lighted by a few electric bulbs | placed at long intervals. But at pres- | ent there are no lights, and the as- | pirant to Liberty’s crown tolls upward through a murky atmosphere eloquent- 1y typical of the dark ages. This' total lack of light, however, | brings out conspicuously whatever holes there are in the statue, made from the rust that the utilltarians are claiming just now is attacking the out- er planes of bronze with deadly intent. From what I saw I estimated that there are all the way from 500 to 1000 such holes in these bronze plates. They do not appear to be more than mere pinholes, but the light shines through them and they must undoubtedly mark defects in the construction, whether from rust or other causes the expert metal worker can best determine. There was rust also, unquestionably, on the stairway and some of the In- terlor structural work, rust that even a tyro in metal lore could not fail’ to discern, and whose presence added very little to the feellng of mecurity of the visitor mounting this bewlidering spiral. It was odd to stumble into a solemn- visaged Chinaman at the top of the stairs when the little room forming the head of the statue‘was reached. He seemed to be a sort of guardian of the place, this Chinaman, and inspected every one who appeared above the dark hole forming Miss Liberty's neck with an unwinking scrutiny peculiar to the Celestial alone. There were scarcely any Americans present, however, in the crowded room, and so the command- ing position of the Chinaman seemed not altogether inappropriate for so cosmopolitan & gathering. There we all swayed in the wind—for Miss Lib- erty appears to have a column of loose- jointed vertebrae that admits of an alarming degree of osclllation when the weather s in termagant mood—repre- | sentatives of most of the known races of the earth, peering through the bronze locks .of the American goddess above the smoke of the passing steam- ers to the group o. giant skyscrapers marking the presence of the metropolis in the distance. In Miss Liberty’s cerebral apartment |there was nothing to be seen of the delicate green and yellow tracery that.| covers her robe and face as the latter | are viewed from the harbor. The hands | of the multitude who have visited the | crownroom of this youthful royal per- |son during the twenty years of her | reign have worn smooth the brows that project below the windows opening out of her diadem—and the only rust to | might call it that, formed by the myriad carvings of the names and | Initials of the “illustrious obscure” of | every tongue and nation to be found in every square inch of available space in Miss Liberty's skull and the curls clustering upon her forehead. It is | not often one is able thus to see the contents of the head of a fair maiden | who 1s still in heg teens, and it is doubt- ful if the average run of the sex at any age preserves such a roster of many natlonalities as are engraved in the unfortunate tablets of memory of the first lady of the land. The descent from this intellectual eyrie through the black, stifiing in- terfor is, in a way, more heir-lifting than the ascent. One gains a rather sickening momentum going down' the narrow spiral steps that suggest the possibilities of =& sudden, desperate plunge into the dark abyss below. And such obstructions as’ one finds upon which to bark an unwary shin, to say | be seen here is that human rust, if one | bornd to have with various ascending visitors! Captain George C. Burnell, who 1s at ‘the Jiead of the army post on Bedloes Island and has charge of the statue assured me that such baleful encoun- ters as I thus experienced would not occur after Miss Liberty's tollet, upon which the men at his post are at pres- ent engaged, is completed. “We will put a sufficient number of incandescent bulbs in the statues to light every cranny of the interior,” he sa2id, “and@ we will paint it throughout a light color. Then there will be an elevator to the top of the pedestal— not to the torch, as the newspapers an- | nounced—and the whole place will be made more convenlent and safer for visitors than it has ever been. When it came into the hands of the War De- partment from the American statue committee two years ago the statue was badly In need of repalr, and it is cnly now that a sufficlent amount of money has been appropriated to put it in fairly goed order. “As to painting the exterlor of the statue, I wish the newspapers had never mehtioned that. I am in receipt of bushels of-lctters on the subiect, and most of them protest vigorously against the proposed plan. just what we will do, but we will have to do something.” Miss Liberty painted—or else Miss| Liberty a wrecked and shriveled old woman! “Vandalism! Outrageous vandalism!” are the words of one of the best-known authoritles on bronze and copper in New York. “And it is vandalism for which there is no excuSe from either a utilitarlan nothing of the sudden collisions one is 3 REDERICK N. GRAY of St. Louls F sat down upon a piece of chewing gum on a seat in a church in Se- dalia nine years ago, and by so doing he won as his bride Miss Estelle Gran- ger, who cliewed the gum. They were married in St. Louls last week. At the wedding feast that followed the ceremony Mr. Gray Insisted that each guest chew a large wad of gum in honor of the sticky mass that first attached him to the chair and through it to Miss Granger. Gray is a native of St. Louls, while his bride was born and raised in Se- dalia and was 2 worshiper at the First when she chewed the gum that won her a husband. Only {n those days she never thought of such things as hus- bands or love affairs except when she read her fairy books. It so happened that nine years ago last May Gray, then a young man of 22, went to Sedalla on business, and, services at the First Methodlst Church in the morning. He admits himself that he was a serious young man, and his bride declares that he was the worst stugk-up young man she ever saw in her life. At any rate, Mr. Gray was ushered Granger was sitting with her mother and father. Essie was then about 11 vears old, and when she saw the “stuck- pew she declded suddenly that he should be more stuck up than ever— if she could accomplish it. It so happened that Essie was chew- ing gum, surreptitiously and under the cover of the hymnal, which she held before her face while masticating ac- tively so that old Miss Harris in the next pew could not see her apd reach over to tap her on the head with a fan, as was her custom when Essie did This time Essie chewed with a ven- geance and with a well defilned plan in her active little mind. She was pre- paring for the prayer which she knew would precede the sermon—when very- body had to stand up. And, while she masticated champing- 1y, she kept her bright blue eyes fixed with a sort of fascinated stars upon the light gray trousers that incased the nether extremities of Mr. Gray. During all this time Mr. Gray re- mained in serene unconsciousness of the pretty little gir]l next to him, of the great liquid blue eyes and the mass of rebellious blond curls, held partly with- in bounds by blue ribbons. Nelther did ha notice that she was chewing en- ergetically, but as if her jaws were tired. Then came the prayer~-and every- body arose. Little Miss Granger was late in arising and, as she stood up, she carefully placed one hand on the Methodist Episcopal Church of that city ' following his regular plan, he attended |' into the pew in which little “Essie” | up” young man from St. Louls In the|' not comport herself properly in church. || or an artistic point of view,” he went on. | SHES DOWR O A PIECE AN WERS - The prayer ended and Mr. Gray, care- wooden seat of the pew, and when she lifted the hand she left a huge and gum on the seat. fully parting the skirts of his frock coat (he confesses it was his first), sat enormously sticky bunch of chewing |down to listen to the sermon, while an idiotic grin overspread the seraphic I can’t say now | “Do I consider that the Statue of]| Liberty is in danger? Not in the slight- | est. The interfor structural parts may be in need of repair, but the statue itself, the part seen from the harbor, is in a good, or, rather, better condi- tion than on the day when it was put up. Rust? It can't rust! Copper never rusts—and this is a copper | statue, not bronze, as is commonly sup- | posed. By actual experiment we are| certain that copper, or bronze, which | is 90 per cent copper, is the most dur-“ able of metals known. History will| | corroborate my statement, as you will find if you examine the copper and bronze objects thousands of years old| on exhibition at the Metropolitan Mu-| seum of Art. These copper objects have | been coated by the same methods with | a green tarnish that are in operation| on the Statue of Liberty, and in al cases the metal remains intact be-| neath this tarnish. | “This green coating, witk yellow and| whitish streaks, s simply an oxidation | peculiar ‘to copper, bronze, or brass.| It does not eat away the metal, as happens in the case of rust on irom.| Can it be taken off? Certainly, by pol- | ishing or chemical treatment. “Now for the artistic side of the| | question. You may be surprised to| know that for years we have been try- | ing to dmitate the oolor effect of the| Statue of Liberty by artificial means in| our copper work. By architects and| artists generally this color effect is| considered the type of perfection for this kind of metal. I remember once asking the late Stanford White how he| | wished us to finish the decorative metal | work on a noted building that he was| putting up. ‘Go down to Bedloes Isl-| and,’ he said, ‘and study e Statue of Liberty. You will find it the most beautiful example of metal coloring in existence in the world today.’ It is needless to add that if there were any danger to the metal in obtaining this color effect (which we do by Imitating the process employed by nature through chemical means), we would hardly venture upon it, nor would architects ask for it. I can also say that If we could ‘reproduce exactly the exquisite oxidation that is found only on the Statue of Liberty it would be worth un- told sums to us. But hitherto our best efforts have fallen short of the great original. “As to the many small holes that you find in the plates of which the statue is composed, they are not formed by rust, but were made in the original asting. I remember noticing them shortly after the statute was put up. These holes do no harm. If the cop- per plates were fairly riddled with them the statue would not be in dan- ger of falling, since it is entirely de- pendent on the interior framework, which is of iron. The latter may have rusted somewhat, and In that case a' coat of paint should undoubtedly be given to it. The copper plates, you see, are not more than about an eighth of an inch thick, and 5o were never ex- pected to support themselves. Hence the sensational cry that the statue is in danger of falling because these cop- per plates have become oxidized is In every respect ridiculous. “It is as disgraceful as was the doubting of Lotta’s fountaln in San Francisco with cheap paint”—and | somehow I agreed with him. But Miss Liberty will be painted just the same. e countenace of Miss Granger. Mr. Gray seemed uneasy. He moved. He tried to preserve his attentive ex- pression, but he moved again, and those near him observed that he did OF CHEWING: GURE A BREBE ~ not appear at ease. Then, with the ex- pression of an early Christian martyr, Mr. Gray settled back in the pew, closed his lips, folded his arms and looked straight at the pulpit. As he did so he heard a snicker and, turning his eyes, ho observed Miss Granger, whose facial expression was as beatific as that of a small boy who has just inserted a pin into the person of another small boy when the teacher wasn’'t looking:. Mr. Gray did not turn his head in that direction agaln during the sermon—but that one glimpse of her face so im- pressed it upon his mind that the image remained for nine years. The scene at the close of the sermon was heartrending, and almost trousers rending. Mr. Gray finally got loose— the skirts of his coat hid the square inch of chewing gum—and he walked out of the edifice with seeming dignity. Miss Granger followed with a seraphic grin upon her face—and a feeling of satisfaction in her heart. She had taken down the stuck-up young man. That seemingly was the end of tie story. Nobody fhought of a sequel. Indeed the chewing gum Incident was erased almost from the memory of all concerned until one morning when Mr. Gray, now a partner in the house he represented on the road, climbed on to an Eastern avenus car to ride down- town, and after settling himself in his seat looked up to a beautiful young woman in the opposite seat grinning at him idiotically. He vows that before he realized who she was he reached under himself to make sure there was no chewing gum on the seat. The girl blushed suddenly and looked out of the window. Gray blushed too and looked out of his win- dow. A second later each looked side- ways at the other, their eyes met, and both turned away blushing and smiling. Gray then moved over beside her, raised his hat and said: “I am glad to meet you again. I have some of your property at home— on a pair of my old trousers—unless mother has given them awa He was seeking revenge. For an instant Miss Granger tried to look indignant and, falling, laughed and said, “I knew you the moment I saw you. “And I you,” he sald—and they both laughed. “You're not half as stuck up & you were then.” “I hope not. Say—was that why you daia 1t “Yes—I was only a little girl—and I never have chewed gum since.” Before they got downtown they were great friends. Gray had learned that Miss Granger was living with her mother and sister in the Forest Park district and had received permission to call. A month later their engagement Wwas announced and they were married quietly at home. Yet, strange to say, the bride declares that |:h “l’l" any child of hers chews gum e’ll spank it, and sToom agrees with her, s