Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/820

they can give it only gratitude and sympathy, and, as some cynic has observed, the bonds of sympathy bear no coupons. This criticism, however, is only a surface truth, for no cause ever failed for lack of funds, if it had enough vital sympathy behind it.

There is a lake on a mountain-top in Missouri, without visible outlet or inlet, which yet rises and falls several feet. What is the explanation of the mystery? It is fed by an ebbing and flowing underground river. So it is with great enterprises. They are borne on the current of popular enthusiasm—unseen, it may be, but never unfelt. So it is with Hampton. Its success hangs on popular support, and on its success hangs the experiment of industrial education as a solution of the negro problem.

This is a great national question. It intimately ccmcerns the white population at the South, whose welfare, whether they will or not, is bound up with that of the blacks, so that the sarcastic advice, "Educate your masters!" becomes literal counsel of the truest and wisest kind. Nor are we of the North indifferent observers. So bound together is this nation by the iron bands of railroads and telegraph wires that the issue of affairs in the most distant South is of vital interest to us. Let it not be said of the thinkers of to-day as of those blind ones who watched the condition of France before the Revolution, that the philosophers were duller than the fribbles. Let us clearly recognize the difficulty and complexity of the problem with which we have to deal, and then let us address ourselves to its solution soberly, earnestly, and unremittingly.

 

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A discussion has arisen concerning the manner in which the Egyptian tombs may have been lighted for the execution of the elaborate paintings that are found in them. Any light that would smoke appears to be ruled out, for it could not have failed to leave its mark, which is not there. Mr. Newman, an American artist, who has spent several winters on the Nile, studying and painting tombs and temples, has not been able to suggest any other solution of the problem than the use of the electric light. Mr. W. Flinders Petrie is not yet ready to invoke the electric light, but believes that sunlight was sent into the dark passages by the use of mirrors. He says: "A very small amount of reflected sunshine is enough to work by. I have taken photographs at Gizeh (which require far more light than is needed by a painter or sculptor) by means of four successive reflections of sunshine from common sheets of tin plate, such as biscuit-tin lids. These four reflections sent the light round corners, into what was absolutely dark space, a distance of over thirty feet, and the effect was brilliant to the eye. I feel certain, therefore, that with larger reflectors there would be no difficulty whatever in lighting any part of the Kings' Tombs more brightly than by small lamps."

 

An American, Mr. Henry, in Longuyon, France, has constructed a clock entirely of paper, which has run regularly for two years, with no greater variation than a minute a month.