The weather is delightful. Flowers are abundant, awakened by the summer showers; and the weevils visit them in the lovely autumn weather. Then, when the cold sets in, they take up their winter quarters in any suitable retreat. Others, still numerous, are less hasty in quitting the native seed. They remain within during the whole winter, sheltered behind the trap-door, which they take care not to touch. The door of the cell will not open on its hinges, or, to be exact, will not yield along the line of least resistance, until the warm days return. Then the late arrivals will leave their shelter and rejoin the more impatient, and both will be ready for work when the pea-vines are in flower.

To take a general view of the instincts in their inexhaustible variety is, for the observer, the great attraction of the entomological world, for nowhere do we gain a clearer sight of the wonderful way in which the processes of life are ordered. Thus regarded, entomology is not, I know, to the taste of everybody; the simple creature absorbed in the doings and habits of insects is held in low esteem. To the terrible utilitarian, a bushel of peas preserved from the weevil is of more importance than a volume of observations which bring no immediate profit.

Yet who has told you, O man of little faith, that what is useless to-day will not be useful to-morrow? If we learn the customs of insects or animals, we shall understand better how to protect our goods. Do not despise disinterested knowledge, or you may rue the day. It is by the accumulation of ideas, whether immediately applicable or otherwise, that humanity has done, and will continue to do, better to-day than yesterday, and better to-morrow than to-day. If we live on peas and beans, which we dispute with the weevil, we also live by knowledge, that mighty kneading-trough in which the bread of progress is mixed and leavened. Knowledge is well worth a few beans.

Among other things, knowledge tells us: "The seedsman need not go to the expense of waging war upon the weevil. When the peas arrive in the granary, the harm is already done; it is irreparable, but not transmissible. The untouched peas have nothing to fear from the neighborhood of those which have been attacked, however long the mixture is left. From the latter the weevils will issue when their time has come; they will fly away from the storehouse if escape is possible; if not, they will perish without in any way attacking the sound peas. No eggs, no new generation will ever be seen upon or within the dried peas in the storehouse; there the adult weevil can work no further mischief."

The Bruchus is not a sedentary inhabitant of granaries: it requires the open air, the sun, the liberty of the fields. Frugal in everything, it absolutely disdains the hard tissues of the vegetable; its tiny mouth is content with a few honeyed mouthfuls, enjoyed upon the flowers. The larvae, on the other hand, require the tender tissues of the green pea growing in the pod. For these reasons the granary knows no final multiplication on the part of the despoiler.

The origin of the evil is in the kitchen-garden. It is there that we ought to keep a watch on the misdeeds of the Bruchus, were it not for the fact that we are nearly always weaponless when it comes to fighting an insect. Indestructible by reason of its numbers, its small size, and its cunning, the little creature laughs at the anger of man. The gardener curses it, but the weevil is not disturbed; it imperturbably continues its trade of levying tribute. Happily we have assistants more patient and more clear-sighted than ourselves.

During the first week of August, when the mature Bruchus begins to emerge, I notice a little Chalcidian, the protector of our peas. In my rearing-cages it issues under my eyes in abundance from the peas infested by the grub of the weevil. The female has a reddish head and thorax; the abdomen is black, with a long augur-like oviscapt. The male, a little smaller, is black. Both sexes have reddish claws and thread-like antennae.

In order to escape from the pea, the slayer of the weevil makes an opening in the centre of the circular trap-door which the grub of the weevil prepared in view of its future deliverance. The slain has prepared the way for the slayer. After this detail the rest may be divined.

When the preliminaries to the metamorphosis are completed, when the passage of escape is bored and furnished with its lid of superficial membrane, the female Chalcidian arrives in a busy mood. She inspects the peas, still on the vine, and enclosed in their pods; she auscultates them with her antennae; she discovers, hidden under the general envelope, the weak points in the epidermic covering of the peas. Then, applying her oviscapt, she thrusts it through the side of the pod and perforates the circular trap-door. However far withdrawn into the centre of the pea, the Bruchus, whether larvae or nymph, is reached by the long oviduct. It receives an egg in its tender flesh, and the thing is done. Without possibility of defence, since it is by now a somnolent grub or a helpless pupa, the embryo weevil is eaten until nothing but skin remains. What a pity that we cannot at will assist the multiplication of this eager exterminator! Alas! our assistants have got us in a vicious circle, for if we wished to obtain the help of any great number of Chalcidians we should be obliged in the first place to breed a multiplicity of Bruchidae.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: From Social Life in the Insect World, translated by Bernard Miall, Chapter XVIII. The Century Company, New York, 1913.]

[Footnote 4: This classification is now superseded; the Pea and Bee Weevils—Bruchus pisi and Bruchus lenti—are classed as Bruchidae, in the series of Phytophaga. Most of the other weevils are classed as Curculionidae, series Rhyncophora.—(Trans.)]



THE EXPOSITION OF A MANUFACTURING PROCESS

MODERN PAPER-MAKING[5]

J.W. Butler Paper Company

Though the steady march of progress and invention has given to the modern paper-maker marvelous machines by which the output is increased a thousandfold over that of the old, slow methods, he still has many of the same difficulties to overcome that confronted his predecessor. While the use of wood pulp has greatly changed the conditions as regards the cheaper grades of this staple, the ragman is to-day almost as important to the manufacturer of the higher grades as he was one hundred years ago when the saving of rags was inculcated as a domestic virtue and a patriotic duty. Methods have changed, but the material remains the same. In a complete modern mill making writing and other high-grade papers, the process begins with unsightly rags as the material from which to form the white sheets that are to receive upon their spotless polished surface the thoughts of philosophers and statesmen, the tender messages of affection, the counsels and admonitions of ministers, the decisions of grave and learned judges, and all the

Wisdom of things, mysterious, divine, that Illustriously doth on paper shine,

as was duly set forth in rhyme by the Boston News Letter in 1769. "The bell cart will go through Boston about the end of next month," it announced, and appealed to the inhabitants of that modern seat of learning and philosophy to save their rags for the occasion, and thus encourage the industry.

The rags do not come to the mammoth factories of to-day in bell carts, but by the carload in huge bales gathered from all sections of this great Republic, as well as from lands beyond the eastern and western oceans. The square, compact, steam-compressed bundles are carried by elevators well up toward the top of the building, where they await the knife of the "opener." When they have been opened, the "feeder" throws the contents by armfuls into the "thrasher." The novice or layman, ignorant of the state in which rags come to the mill, will find their condition a most unpleasant surprise, especially disagreeable to his olfactory nerves. Yet the unsavory revelation comes with more force a little farther on, in the "assorting-room." The "thrasher" is a great cylindrical receptacle, revolving rapidly, which is supplied with long wooden beaters or arms passing through a wooden cylinder and driven by power. When the rags have been tossed in, there ensues a great pounding and thrashing, and the dust is carried off in suction air-tubes, while the whipped rags are discharged and carried to the "sorting" and "shredding" room. Here the rags are assorted as to size, condition, and the presence of buttons, hooks and eyes, or other material that must be removed. Then those that need further attention are passed on to the "shredders," these as well as the "sorters" being women. The "shredders" stand along a narrow counter; in front of each one there is fastened a long scythe-blade with its back toward the operator and its point extending upward, the shank being firmly fixed to the table or operating board. Here buttons, hard seams, and all similar intruders are disposed of, and the larger pieces of rags are cut into numerous small ones on the scythe-blades. The rags thus prepared are tossed by the women into receptacles in the tables. The work in this room is the most disagreeable and unwholesome in the entire process of manufacture, and this despite the fact that these rags, too, have been thrashed, and freed from an amount of dust and dirt beyond belief.

While one is watching the operations carried on here, it is impossible to repress the wish that rags might be bought otherwise than by the pound, for, unfortunately, filth, dust, and dirt weigh, and to wash rags only reduces the weight. While this is a true reflection of the condition in the average mill, it is pleasant to know, however, there are others of the higher class that are decided exceptions as far as dust and dirt are concerned. Such are the mills making high-grade ledger and bond papers, as well as the mill manufacturing the paper that is used for the printing of our "greenbacks," to which further reference will be made later. In these exceptional mills everything is neat and perfectly clean, all the stock used being new and fresh from the cotton or linen mills, or from factories producing cloth goods, like shirt and corset factories, and others of the same sort. The sorting and shredding room is always large and light, with windows on all sides, and well ventilated, offering a decided contrast in many respects to the less cleanly mills first referred to where the women must wear bonnets or hoods for the protection of the hair. In either case the process is certainly an improvement over the old plan of leaving the rags to decay in a cellar to expedite the removal of the glutinous matter from them.

From the "sorting" and "shredding" room the rags are conveyed to the "cutter," where they are cut and chopped by revolving knives, leaving them in small pieces and much freer from dust and grit. Various ingenious devices are employed for removing metal and other hard and injurious matter, magnetic brushes serving this purpose in some mills. When the "cutter" has finished its work, the still very dirty rags go for a further cleansing to the "devil," or "whipper," a hollow cone with spikes projecting within, against which work the spikes of a drum, dashing the rags about at great speed. Human lives are often freed of their baser elements and restored to purity and beauty through the chastening influences of tribulation or adversity; in like manner the "whipper" carries the rags forward a step in the process of purification that is necessary before they can be brought to their highest usefulness. But the cleansing process, which is only a preparation for what is to follow, does not end with the "whipper," which has served merely to loosen, not to dislodge, a great deal of dust and dirt. The final operation in the preliminary cleaning is performed by the "duster" proper, which is a conical revolving sieve. As the mass of rags is tossed and shaken about, the loosened dust is carried away by the suction of the air, which draws the dust particles into tubes furnished with suction fans. In most modern mills the rags are carried forward from the "duster" on an endless belt, and a careful watch is kept upon them as they emerge to detect the presence of unchopped pieces, buttons, or other foreign substances. The journey of the rags over this endless belt or conveyor terminates in a receiving-room, in the floor of which there are several openings, and immediately below these the mouths of the "digesters," which are in a room beneath. The "digesters," as they are suggestively and appropriately termed, are huge revolving boilers, usually upright, which often have as great a diameter as eight feet, with a height of twenty-two feet and a digestive capacity of upward of five tons of rags each. The rags that are to be "cooked" are fed in to the "digesters" through the openings in the floor, and the great movable manhole plates are then put in place and closed, hermetically sealing the openings or mouths through which the boilers have been fed, these having first been charged with a mixed solution of lime and soda and with live hot steam in lieu of gastric juice as a digesting fluid and force. In some mills the boilers are placed in a horizontal position, while in others they are in the form of a large ball or globe, in either case being operated in the manner described; those of upright form, however, are most commonly in use. The rags are boiled under steam pressure of about forty pounds to the square inch, and the cooking is continued from twelve to fourteen hours.

It is here that the process of cleaning begins in earnest; and as the mass of rags is tumbled about in its scalding bath of steam-heated lime-water, or "milk of lime," the coloring and glutinous matters, as well as all other impurities, are loosened from the fibers, which are in the end so cleansed and purified as to come forth unstained and of virgin purity. Having been sufficiently boiled and digested, the mushy material, still looking dark and forbidding, is emptied onto the floor below or into receptacles placed directly beneath the boilers, where the color and dirt are allowed to drain off. The mass is then conveyed to the "washers," great tub-like receptacles, which are known as "Hollanders," from the fact that these rag engines were invented in Holland about the year 1750 A.D. They are oval-shaped tubs, about twenty feet long, nine feet wide, and three feet high, varying somewhat according to the conditions. Each tub is divided for two-thirds of its length by an upright partition, or "mid-feather," as it is called, which makes a narrow course around the vat. On one side of the partition, the tub is raised in a half-circle, close to which revolves an iron roll about three or four feet in diameter, and covered with knives; in the bottom of the tub, and directly under the revolving roll, is another set of knives called a "bed-plate," which is stationary, and against which the roll can be lowered. But let us not anticipate. When the emptyings from the boiler have been thrown into the "washer," a continuous stream of water is turned in at one end, the knife-roll having been adjusted so as to open up the rags as they are set in motion. These then begin a lively chase around the edge of the vat, through the race-course formed by the "mid-feather," and under the rag-opening knives, where the water is given a chance to wash out all impurities, then on up the incline over the "back-fall," so-called from the elevation in the tub. A cylinder of wire-cloth, partly immersed in the moving mass, holds back the now rapidly whitening fibers, while the dirty water escapes into buckets inside the wire-cloth drum, and is discharged into and through an escape-spout. The heavy particles of dirt settle into what is termed a "sand-trap" at the bottom of the tub.

As the water clears, the roll is lowered closer and closer to the bottom of the bed-plate, in order to open up the fibers more thoroughly for the free circulation of the water among them. When the several agencies of the "washer" have accomplished their purpose and the water runs clear and unsullied, a bleaching material is put into the mass, which in the course of from two to six hours becomes as white as milk. The dirty offscourings of all ragdom, first seen in the original bales, and gathered from the four corners of the globe, have endured many buffetings, many bruisings and tribulations, and having been washed come forth pure, sweet, and clean. From the washers the rags are precipitated through a trap into drainers, which are chambers made of stone and brick, with a false bottom through which the water is allowed to drain. This rag pulp, now called half stock, is kept in this receptacle until the water and liquor are thoroughly drained off, when it becomes a white and compact mass of fibers.

The rags should stand in the drainers for at least one week, though better results are obtained if they are left for a period two or three times as long, as the fibers become more subdued. The process of paper-making as it has already been described, applies more particularly to papers made from rags. To-day, a very large proportion of the cheaper papers are made from wood, either entirely or in part, and these wood-made papers are subjected to a different treatment, to which further reference will be made.

From the drainer the mass is carted to the beating engine, or "beater," which is very similar in construction to the washer just described. The knives on the roll in the beater are grouped three together instead of two, and are placed nearer the bottom or bed-plate in order to separate more thoroughly the fibers. In the beater are performed many and varying manipulations, designed not only to secure a more perfect product but also to produce different varieties of paper. It is the theory of the beating process that the fibers are not cut, but are drawn out to their utmost extent. In watching the operations of the "beater," one notices on the surface of the slowly revolving mass of fibers, floating bluing, such as the thrifty housewife uses to whiten fine fabrics. This familiar agency of the laundry is introduced into the solution of fibers with the same end in view that is sought in the washtub—to give the clear white color that is so desirable. Many of the inventions and discoveries by which the world has profited largely have been due primarily to some fortunate accident, and according to a pretty story upon which paper-makers have set the seal of their belief for more than one hundred and fifty years, the use of bluing was brought about in the same way. About the year 1746, so runs the story, a Mrs. Buttonshaw, the wife of an English paper-maker, accidentally dropped into a tub of pulp the bag of bluing, or its contents, which she was about to use in a washing of fine linen. Frightened at what she had done and considering it the part of wisdom to keep silence, she discreetly held her peace and awaited results. But when her husband had expressed great wonder and admiration over the paper made from that particular pulp, and had sold it in London at an advance of several shillings over the price of his other paper, which had not met with any such accident, she realized that the time for silence had passed. Her account of the happy accident led her grateful husband to purchase a costly scarlet cloak for her on his next visit to London town. This accident brought about another result which was to prove of inestimable value to the future paper-maker—the use of bluing in paper when especial whiteness is desired.

Important as the bluing or coloring is, however, it is only one of the numerous operations or manipulations that take place in the beater. Many of these, such as engine-sizing and body-coloring, require skill and constant watchfulness. Here, too, if anywhere, adulteration takes place. It is sometimes necessary to secure a fine-appearing paper at small cost, and it is profitable to add to its weight. In such cases a process of "loading" takes place here, and clay or cheap, heavy fibers are added. Clay is of value not only to increase the weight but also to render the paper more opaque, so as to prevent type or illustrations from showing through, while at the same time it makes possible a smoother surface by filling the pores in the paper. But while it adds to the weight, clay must, of necessity, weaken the paper. In engine-sizing, which is done in the beater, the size is thoroughly incorporated with the fibers as these revolve or flow around the engine. This sizing renders the paper more nearly impervious to moisture. The difference between a paper that is sized and that has a repellent surface which prevents the ink from settling into it when it is written upon, and an ordinary blotting-paper with its absorbent surface, is due entirely to the fact that the former is most carefully treated with sizing both in the beating engine and in the size tub or vat referred to later, whereas in the latter paper it is omitted. If the paper is to be tinted or body-colored, colors made from aniline are generally used. Only in the highest grade of writing-paper and in some few papers that demand colors fast to the light is any other order of coloring matter employed. As may be easily imagined, considerable skill is required to secure exactly the desired tint, and to get the coloring matter so evenly mixed that each small fiber shall receive its proper tint, and thus to insure that the paper when finished shall be of uniform color and not present a mottled appearance.

When the operations of the beating engine have been completed, a most interesting process begins which marks a vast advance over the earlier method of forming the sheets of paper with mould and deckel, straining off the water, and shaking the frame with a quick motion to mat the fibers together. The patient striving toward something better which has marked all the centuries since man first learned to carve his rude records, finds its consummation in the process of making paper in a continuous web. This result is accomplished by a machine first invented by Louis Robert, a workman in a mill at Enonnes, France, who obtained a French patent, with a bounty of eight thousand francs for its development. This he later sold to M. Didot, the proprietor of the mill, who crossed the Channel into England, where, with the aid of a skilled mechanic, the machine was in a measure perfected, and then sold to Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier. They, with the further aid of Bryan Donkin, their employee and expert engineer, made many additional improvements, and sank in the enterprise some sixty thousand pounds sterling, for which their only reward was blighted hopes and embittered lives. In 1847 the London Times made a fruitless appeal on behalf of the surviving brother, who was eighty years of age and in great poverty. It is seldom that the world voluntarily makes return to those who have bestowed upon it great material or moral benefits, though it is ever ready to expend its treasure for engines of destruction and to magnify and reward those who have been most successful in destroying human life.

The first "machine" mill was started at Frogmore, Hertz, England, in 1803, which was the year of the great Louisiana Purchase by the United States, and it is not difficult to say which event has been productive of the greater and more beneficial results to this nation. Through this invention and its improvements, the modern newspaper and magazine, with their tens and hundreds of thousands of copies daily, have been made possible, and men of all classes have been brought in touch with the best thought of the day. Whatever makes for greater intelligence and enlightenment throughout a nation makes for the greater stability of the national life, and gives new emphasis to Bulwer's words:

Take away the sword; States can be saved without it—bring the pen.

If to-day the power of the pen over the sword is greater than it has ever been before, its increased and increasing influence must be credited in large measure to the inventive genius and the public-spirited enterprise that has made possible the great output of our modern paper-mills. So thoroughly did these forces do their work in the beginning that in the century that has elapsed since the Fourdrinier brothers sacrificed themselves and their means in the perfecting of their machine, there have been really no changes in the fundamental principle. Those that have been made have been in the nature of further development and improvement, such as increasing the speed and widening the web, thereby multiplying the product many fold.

But let us resume the interesting journey of the rags, which had reached a state of purification and perfection as pulp, and which we left in the beaters. In some grades of paper the perfected and prepared pulp is taken from the beaters and passed through what is known as a "refining" or "Jordan" engine for the purpose of more thoroughly separating the fibers and reducing them to extreme fineness. The refining engines are, however, used only in the manufacture of certain grades of paper. The pulp is next taken from the beater or refining engine, as the case may be, to what is called a "stuff-chest," an inclosed vat partly filled with water, in which a contrivance for shaking and shifting, properly called an "agitator," keeps the fibers in suspension.

From the stuff-chest the mixture is pumped into what is known as the "mixing" or "regulating" box. Here the stream first passes over the "sand-tables" in a continuous flow. These are composed of little troughs with cross-pieces, and are covered at the bottom with long-haired felt, to catch any sand or dirt that may still adhere after the numerous operations to which the pulp has been subjected. The flow is then forced through the "screen," which is a horizontal piece of metal pierced with slots. For very fine paper these slots are so small as to be only one one-hundredth of an inch in width. They are usually about a quarter of an inch apart. Through these tiny apertures the fibers must find their way, leaving behind in their difficult passage all lumps, dirt, or knotted fibers which would mar the perfection of the product toward which they are tending. A vibrating motion is given to the screen as the flow passes over it, or revolving strainers may be used.

When the screen has finished its work, the water carrying the pulp in solution flows in an even stream, the volume of which varies according to the width of the web of paper to be produced, through a discharge-cock onto the Fourdrinier or cylinder machine, as the case may be, each of which will be duly described. This stream has a filmy appearance and is of diverse color, depending upon the shade of paper to be produced. From its consistency, which is about that of milk, it is difficult to imagine that it floats separate particles of fiber in such quantities as, when gathered on the wire cloth and passed to a felt blanket and then pressed between rollers, to form in a second of time a broad web of embryo paper sufficiently strong and firm to take definite form. Man's mastery of the process by which this startling and wonderful change is effected has come as one of the rewards of his long and patient study.

The Fourdrinier machine, which preserves at least the name of the enterprising developers of the invention, takes up the work that was formerly done by the molder. The wire cloth upon which the fibers are discharged is an endless belt, the full width of the paper machine. Upon this the fibers spread out evenly, being aided by a fan-shaped rubber or oil cloth, which delivers the smooth stream under a gate regulated to insure perfect evenness and to fix uniformly the fibers of the web now commencing its final formation. Deckel-straps of india-rubber are fastened on both sides of the wire screen, and move with it, thus holding the watery pulp in place. The deckel-straps are adjustable and fix or regulate the width of the paper. These and the gate, or "slicer," are attached to what is termed the deckel-frame, which corresponds to the deckel used by paper-makers in the days when the manufacture was carried on by hand. As the stream flows onto the endless belt of wire cloth, the water which has borne the fibers filters into the trough beneath. Being charged with very fine fibers, size, coloring matter, and other similar ingredients, it is carried back into the pulp-chest to save these materials, as well as to contribute again to the extra supply of water needed. For this reason the trough into which it falls from the revolving "wire" is called the "save-all." A shaking motion is imparted to the "wire" from the frame upon which rest the rolls that keep it in its never-ending round. This aids in draining away the water and mats or interlaces the fibers together. At the end of the "save-all," where the fibers are to leave the "wire" for the next stage of their journey, suction-boxes are placed, provided with an air-pump to take up the surplus water that has not yet found its way through the meshes. Between these suction-boxes above the wire is a wire-covered roll which impresses the newly formed sheet; this impression cylinder is called a "dandy roll," and it is from this that the web receives the markings or impressions that characterize different papers. All watermarks, patterns, and designs which it is desired to have appear in the paper are put upon this roll and here impressed upon the soft sheet, which is clarified and left transparent at the point of contact. Thus the impression is permanently fixed in the fiber, so that it can be seen at any time by holding the sheet to the light. The power of suggestiveness is a quality which is highly esteemed wherever it is found, and which frequently furnishes a standard of judgment.

Judged by such a criterion, the impression cylinder, or "dandy roll," has an added value, for in all probability its operation suggested the idea of printing from cylinders, as in our present web or perfecting presses.

The matted pulp, now having sufficient body, passes on between two rolls covered with felt which deliver the web of damp paper upon an endless belt of moist felt, while the "wire" passes under and back to continue a fresh supply. The paper is as yet too fragile to travel alone, and the web felt carries it between two metal rolls called the first press-rolls. These squeeze out more water, give a greater degree of compactness to the fibers, smooth the upper surface, and finally deliver the web of paper to a second felt apron which carries it under and to the back of the second press-rolls. In this way the under surface comes to the top, and is in its turn subjected to the smoothing process. A delicate scraper or blade, the length of the press-rolls, is so placed on each roll that should the endless web from any cause be broken, the blade may operate with sufficient force to prevent the wet paper from clinging to the rolls and winding about them. From this point the paper travels alone, having become firm and strong enough to sustain its own weight; passing above the second press-rolls, it resumes its onward journey around the drying cylinders, passing over and under and over and under. The drying cylinders are hollow and heated by steam, their temperature being regulated according to requirements. These driers, made from iron or steel, are usually from three to four feet in diameter and vary in length according to the width of the machine. There are from twelve to fifty of these cylinders, their number depending upon the character and weight of the paper to be produced, very heavy sheets requiring many more drying cylinders than sheets of lighter weight.

Strange, almost phenomenal, conditions come about in the transformation from filmy pulp to finished paper. A sheet which, though formed, is at the first press-roll too fragile to carry its own weight, becomes possessed of a final strength and power that is almost incredible. The myriad of minute fibers composing the sheet, upon drying uniformly, possesses great aggregate strength. A sheet of paper yields readily to tearing, but the same sheet, when a perfectly even tension is applied, will demonstrate that it is possessed of wonderful resisting power. In evidence may be cited an instance that seems almost beyond belief. Through some curious mishap a web of heavy paper, in fact, bristol board, which had been thoroughly formed, was suddenly superheated and then cooled while still on the driers. This was caused by a difference in temperature of the driers and resulted in the sudden contraction of the web of bristol; the strain on the machine was so great that not only were the driving-cogs broken on two of the driers around which the paper was at the moment passing, but the driers themselves were actually lifted out of place, showing a resisting power in the paper of at least several tons. The paper now passes to the upright stack of rolls which are known as "calenders." The word is derived from calendra; a corruption of cylindrus, a roller or cylinder. They are simply rollers revolving in contact, and heated from the interior by steam. These calenders are used for giving to the paper a smooth and even surface, and are also employed in the smoothing and finishing of cloth. The speed with which the paper passes through these cylinders is remarkable, from one hundred to five hundred feet running through and over the machine in a minute; and in some of the most recent mills the web is as wide as one hundred and fifty-six inches (thirteen feet); this is very nearly double the average machine width of a very few years ago, while the speed has increased in proportionate ratio; only a few years ago the maximum speed was from two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet per minute; at this writing (1900) there are machines in operation which run as high as five hundred feet per minute. But great as has been the increase in the production of paper, the demand has kept pace steadily. The wonderful product of the rag-bag holds an invincible position in the world's economy.

For machine-finished book and print papers, as well as for other cheaper grades, the process ends with the calenders, after which the paper is slit into required widths by disc-knives which are revolving, and so cut continuously. Paper intended for web newspaper presses is taken off in continuous rolls of the widths required, varying from seventeen to seventy-six inches, according to the size of the paper to be printed. These reels contain from fifteen to twenty-five thousand lineal feet of paper, or from three to five miles. The amount of paper used in disseminating the news of the day is enormous; sometimes one or two mills are required to manufacture the supply for a single metropolitan daily, while one New York newspaper claims to have used four hundred and fifty tons of paper in one Christmas edition, which is about four times the amount of its regular daily consumption.

After having been slit into the proper widths by the revolving knives, ordinary flat and book papers are cut into sheets by a straight knife revolving at proper intervals on a horizontal drum. The paper, in sheets, is carried by a travelling apron to a receiving table at the end of the machine, where the sheets as they fall are carefully examined by experts, usually women, who remove any that may be imperfect.

The entire length of a paper machine, from the screens to the calenders, is about one hundred and twenty-five feet, while the height varies, the average being about ten feet. The machines, while necessarily of the finest adjustment, are ponderous and heavy, weighing in some cases as much as four hundred tons, this being the weight of the machine itself, exclusive of its foundations. The machine-room is of necessity well lighted and thoroughly ventilated, and should be kept clean throughout, as cleanliness is an essential factor in the making of good paper. While the same general process applies to all classes of paper made, the particular character of any paper that is to be produced determines exactly the details of the process through which it shall pass and regulates the deviations to be made from the general operations in order to secure special results. For example, some papers are wanted with a rough or "antique" finish, as it is called; in such cases calendering is omitted. Another special process is that by which the paper is made with a ragged or "deckel-edge;" this result is obtained in some mills by playing a stream of water upon the edge of the pulp, crushing and thinning it, and thus giving it a jagged appearance. At the present time this "deckel-edge" paper is being quite extensively used in high-class bookwork. In the case of writing papers, as has already been stated in the description of the beating engines, a vegetable sizing made from resinous matter is introduced into the paper pulp while it is still in solution, and mixes with it thoroughly, thus filling more or less completely the pores of the pulp fibers. This is found sufficient for all ordinary book-papers, for papers that are to be printed upon in the usual way, and for the cheapest grades of writing-paper, where the requirements are not very exacting and where a curtailment of expense is necessary. For the higher grades of writing-paper, however, a distinctly separate and additional process is required. These papers while on the machine in web form are passed through a vat which is called the size-tub, and which is filled with a liquid sizing made of gelatine from clippings of the horns, hides, and hoofs of cattle, this gelatine or glue being mixed with dissolved alum and made fluid in the vat. Papers which are treated in this way are known as "animal," or "tub-sized."

We have duly described machine-dried papers, but these higher grades of writing-papers are dried by what is known as the loft, or pole-dried process. Such paper is permitted to dry very slowly in a loft specially constructed for the purpose, where it is hung on poles several days, during which time the loft is kept at a temperature of about 100 Fahrenheit.

Another detail of considerable importance is that of the "finish" or surface of the paper. When paper with a particularly high or glossy surface is desired, it is subjected to a separate process, after leaving the paper machine, known as supercalendering.

"Supercalendering" is effected by passing the web through a stack of rolls which are similar to the machine calenders already described. These rolls are composed of metal cylinders, alternating with rolls made of solidified paper or cotton, turned exactly true, the top and bottom rolls being of metal and heavier than the others; a stack of supercalenders is necessarily composed of an odd number of rolls, as seven, nine, or eleven. The paper passes and repasses through these calenders until the requisite degree of smoothness and polish has been acquired. The friction in this machine produces so much electricity that ground wires are often used to carry it off in order that the paper may not become so highly charged as to attract dust or cause the sheets to cling together. When the fine polish has been imparted, the rolls of paper go to the cutting machines, which are automatic in action, cutting regular sheets of the required length as the paper is fed to them in a continuous web. In the manufacture of some high grades of paper, such as linens and bonds, where an especially fine, smooth surface is required, the sheets after being cut are arranged in piles of from twelve to fifteen sheets, plates of zinc are inserted alternately between them, and they are subjected to powerful hydraulic pressure. This process is termed "plating," and is, of course, very much more expensive than the process of supercalendering described above.

From the cutters, the sheets are carried to the inspectors, who are seated in a row along an extended board table before two divisions with partitions ten or twelve inches high, affording spaces for the sheets before and after sorting. The work of inspection is performed by women, who detect almost instantly any blemish or imperfection in the finished product as it passes through their hands. If the paper is to be ruled for writing purposes, it is then taken to the ruling machines, where it is passed under revolving discs or pens, set at regular intervals. These convey the ruling ink to the paper as it passes on through the machine, and thus form true and continuous lines. If the paper is to be folded after ruling, as in the case of fine note-papers, the sheets pass on from the ruling machine to the folding machines, which are entirely automatic in their action. The paper is stacked at the back of the first folding guide and is fed in by the action of small rubber rollers which loosen each sheet from the one beneath, and push it forward until it is caught by the folding apparatus. Man's mechanical ingenuity has given to the machines of his invention something that seems almost like human intelligence, and in the case of the folding machine, the action is so regular and perfect that there seems to be no need of an attendant, save to furnish a constant supply of sheets. The folding completed, cutting machines are again brought into requisition, to cut and trim the sheets to the size of folded note or letter-paper, which is the final operation before they are sent out into the world on their mission of usefulness. The finished paper may or may not have passed through the ruling and folding process, but in either case it goes from the cutters to the wrappers and packers, and then to the shipping-clerks, all of whom perform the duties indicated by their names. The wonderful transformation wrought by the magic wand of science and human invention is complete, and what came into the factory as great bales of offensive rags, disgusting to sight and smell, goes forth as delicate, beautiful, perfected paper, redeemed from filth, and glorified into a high and noble use. Purity and beauty have come from what was foul and unwholesome; the highly useful has been summoned forth from the seemingly useless; a product that is one of the essential factors in the world's progress, and that promises to serve an ever-increasing purpose, has been developed from a material that apparently held not the slightest promise. Well might the Boston News Letter of 1769 exclaim in quaint old rhyme:

Rags are as beauties which conceald lie, But when in paper, charming to the eye! Pray save your rags, new beauties to discover, For of paper truly every one's a lover; By the pen and press such knowledge is displayed As would not exist if paper was not made.

And well may man pride himself on this achievement, this marvelous transformation, which represents the fruitage of centuries of striving and endeavor!

Up to this point the reference has been almost entirely to paper made from rags, but radical improvements have been made, caused by the introduction of wood pulp, and these are of such importance that the account would not be complete without some mention of them. These changes are mainly in the methods of manipulating the wood to obtain the pulp, for when that is ready, the process from and including the "washers" and "beaters," is very similar to that already described. All papers, whether made from rags or wood, depend upon vegetable fiber for their substance and fundamental base, and it is found that the different fibers used in paper-making, when finally subdued, do not differ, in fact, whether obtained from rags or from the tree growing in the forest. In the latter case the raw wood is subjected to chemical treatment which destroys all resinous and foreign matters, leaving merely the cellular tissue, which, it is found, does not differ in substance from the cell tissue obtained after treating rags. In either case this cellular tissue, through the treatment to which the raw material is subjected, becomes perfectly plastic or moldable, and while the paper made from one differs slightly in certain characteristics from the paper made from the other, they are nevertheless very similar, and it might be safe to predict that further perfecting of processes will eventually make them practically alike.

The woods used for this purpose are principally poplar and spruce, and there are three classes of the wood pulp: (1) mechanical wood, (2) soda process wood, and (3) sulphite wood pulp. The first method was invented in Germany in 1844. The logs are hewn in the forest, roughly barked, and shipped to the factory, where the first operation is to cut them up by steam saws into blocks about two feet in length. Any bark that may still cling to the log is removed by a rapidly revolving corrugated wheel of steel, while the larger blocks are split by a steam splitter. The next stage of their journey takes these blocks to a great millstone set perpendicularly instead of horizontally. Here a very strong and ingenious machine receives one block at a time, and with an automatically elastic pressure holds it sidewise against the millstone, which, like the mills of the gods, "grinds exceeding fine," and with the aid of constantly flowing water rapidly reduces these blocks to a pulpy form. This pulp is carried into tanks, from which it is passed between rollers, which leave it in thick, damp sheets, which are folded up evenly for shipment, or for storage for future use. If a paper-mill is operated in connection with the pulp-mill, the wood pulp is not necessarily rolled out in sheets, but is pumped directly from the tanks to the beaters.

In the preparation of pulp by the other processes, the blocks are first thrown into a chipping machine with great wheels, the short, slanting knives of which quickly cut the blocks into small chips.

In the soda process, invented by M. Meliner in France in 1865, the chips from spruce and poplar logs are boiled under pressure in a strong solution of caustic soda.

When sulphite wood pulp is to be prepared, the chips are conveyed from the chipper into hoppers in the upper part of the building. Here they are thrown into great upright iron boilers or digesters charged with lime-water and fed with the fumes of sulphur which is burned for the purpose in a furnace adjoining the building and which thus forms acid sulphide of lime. The sulphite process was originally invented by a celebrated Philadelphia chemist, but was perfected in Europe.

The "cooking," or boiling, to which the wood is subjected in both the soda and sulphite processes, effects a complete separation of all resinous and foreign substances from the fine and true cell tissue, or cellulose, which is left a pure fiber, ready for use as described. In the case of all fibers, whether rag or wood, painstaking work counts, and the excellence of the paper is largely dependent upon the time and care given to the reduction of the pulp from the original raw material.

Chemical wood pulp of the best quality makes an excellent product, and is largely used for both print and book paper; it is frequently mixed with rag pulp, making a paper that can scarcely be distinguished from that made entirely from fine rags, though it is not of the proper firmness for the best flat or writing papers. All ordinary newspapers, as well as some of the cheaper grades of book and wrapping paper, are made entirely from wood, the sulphite or soda process supplying the fiber, and ground wood being used as a filler. In the average newspaper of to-day's issue, twenty-five per cent of sulphite fiber is sufficient to carry seventy-five per cent of the ground wood filler. The value of the idea is an economical one entirely, as the ground wood employed costs less than any other of the component parts of a print-paper sheet.

The cylinder machine, to which reference was made earlier in the chapter, was patented in 1809 by a prominent paper-maker of England, Mr. John Dickinson. In this machine, a cylinder covered with wire cloth revolves with its lower portion dipping into a vat of pulp, while by suction a partial vacuum is maintained in the cylinder, causing the pulp to cling to the wire until it is conveyed to a covered cylinder, which takes it up and carries it forward in a manner similar to the system already described. This machine is employed in making straw-board and other heavy and cheap grades of paper.

Generous Mother Nature, who supplies man's wants in such bountiful fashion, has furnished on her plains and in her forests an abundance of material that may be transformed into this fine product of human ingenuity. Esparto, a Spanish grass grown in South Africa, has entered largely into the making of print-paper in England. Mixed with rags it makes an excellent product, but the chemicals required to free it from resin and gritty silica are expensive, while the cost of importation has rendered its use in America impractical. Flax, hemp, manila, jute and straw, and of course old paper that has been once used, are extensively employed in this manufacture, the process beginning with the chemical treatment and boiling that are found necessary in the manipulation of rags. The successful use of these materials has met demands that would not otherwise have been supplied. As a result, the price has been so cheapened that the demand for paper has greatly increased, and its use has been extended to many and various purposes.

Many additional items of interest might be described in connection with the methods of manufacturing paper, but as this work is intended for the general reader, rather than for the manufacturer, those wishing further information are referred to technical works on the subject.

The best linen rags are used for the highest grades of writing and bond papers, while ordinary note, letter, and flat papers are made from cotton rags. In some mills, such as the government mill at Dalton, Massachusetts, where the government paper is made for banknotes, and in others where the finest ledger papers are manufactured, none but new, clean rags are used. These come from the remnants left in the making of linen goods. In the government mill where is made the paper for our national currency, or "greenbacks," there is a special attachment on the machine for introducing into the paper the silk threads that are always to be seen in our paper money. This attachment is just above the "wire" on the machine, and consists of a little conducting trough, through which flows, from a receptacle near the machine, a stream of water holding the silk threads in solution. The trough extends across the machine, and is provided at intervals with openings through which the short pieces of silk thread are automatically released, and sprinkled continuously onto the web of pulp as it passes beneath. The paper is thus distinguished, and infringement and possible counterfeiting are made extremely difficult by the fact that the government absolutely forbids the making of paper by others under a similar process, as well as the production of any paper containing these silk threads. The laws of the United States pertaining to anything that borders on infringement of our various money issues, both metal and currency, are most rigid; anything approaching a similarity of impression is prohibited, and a cut, stamp, or impression of any character that approaches in its appearance any money issue of our government is considered a violation of the law against counterfeiting, and is dealt with severely. The government takes the same uncompromising position in regard to the fabrics used in printing its paper-money issues, and it will be quickly seen that the silk thread process described above it is so great a variation from anything required in the mercantile world that it would be difficult to produce a paper at all similar without an ulterior purpose being at once apparent. For this reason the silk thread interspersion is in reality a very effective medium in preventing counterfeiting, not only on account of its peculiar appearance but also because of the elaborate methods necessary in its production.

In those mills making the finest grades of paper, much of the process of thrashing, beating, dusting, and cleaning necessary in the ordinary mill is omitted. The cleanliness and brightness which are reached only at the "washer" and "beater" engines in the process of manufacturing the lower grades of paper from cheaper rags, prevail at every step in these higher grade mills.

One of the first requisites in making good paper, especially the better grades, is an abundance of pure water, and spring-water, where available, is preferred.

The effort has been made in the description given to cover the process of making paper from the crudest rags. In enumerating the several kinds of paper in another chapter, brief reference will be made to the varying methods required in their manufacture. In this chapter, no attempt has been made to cover more than the principal divisions or varieties of paper—writing, print, and wrapping papers.

The United States, with characteristic enterprise, leads the world in paper-making, supplying about one-third of all that is used on the globe. The city of Holyoke, in Massachusetts, is the greatest paper center in the world, turning out each working-day some two hundred tons of paper, nearly one-half of which is "tub-sized," "loft-dried" writings. The region in the vicinity of Holyoke is dotted with paper-mills, and within a few miles of the city is made about one-half of all the "loft-dried" writings produced in the United States. The tiny acorn planted two centuries ago has waxed with the years, gaining strength and vigor with the increasing strength of the nation, till now it has become a giant oak, whose branches extend to the lands beyond the seas.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: From The Story of Paper-making, Chapter V.J.W. Butler Paper Company, Chicago, 1901.]



THE EXPOSITION OF AN IDEA

THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATION[6]

William James

I wish in the following hour to take certain psychological doctrines and show their practical applications to mental hygiene,—to the hygiene of our American life more particularly. Our people, especially in academic circles, are turning towards psychology nowadays with great expectations; and, if psychology is to justify them, it must be by showing fruits in the pedagogic and therapeutic lines.

The reader may possibly have heard of a peculiar theory of the emotions, commonly referred to in psychological literature as the Lange-James theory. According to this theory, our emotions are mainly due to those organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a reflex way by the stimulus of the exciting object or situation. An emotion of fear, for example, or surprise, is not a direct effect of the object's presence on the mind, but an effect of that still earlier effect, the bodily commotion which the object suddenly excites; so that, were this bodily commotion suppressed, we should not so much feel fear as call the situation fearful; we should not feel surprise, but coldly recognize that the object was indeed astonishing. One enthusiast has even gone so far as to say that when we feel sorry it is because we weep, when we feel afraid it is because we run away, and not conversely. Some of you may perhaps be acquainted with the paradoxical formula. Now, whatever exaggeration may possibly lurk in this account of our emotions (and I doubt myself whether the exaggeration be very great), it is certain that the main core of it is true, and that the mere giving way to tears, for example, or to the outward expression of an anger-fit, will result for the moment in making the inner grief or anger more acutely felt. There is, accordingly, no better known or more generally useful precept in the moral training of youth, or in one's personal self-discipline, than that which bids us pay primary attention to what we do and express, and not to care too much for what we feel. If we only check a cowardly impulse in time, for example, or if we only don't strike the blow or rip out with the complaining or insulting word that we shall regret as long as we live, our feelings themselves will presently be the calmer and better, with no particular guidance from us on their own account. Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear. Again, in order to feel kindly toward a person to whom we have been inimical, the only way is more or less deliberately to smile, to make sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say genial things. One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle with a bad feeling only pins our attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind; whereas, if we act as if from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds its tent like an Arab, and silently steals away.

The best manuals of religious devotion accordingly reiterate the maxim that we must let our feelings go, and pay no regard to them whatever. In an admirable and widely successful little book called The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, by Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, I find this lesson on almost every page. Act faithfully, and you really have faith, no matter how cold and even how dubious you may feel. "It is your purpose God looks at," writes Mrs. Smith, "not your feelings about that purpose; and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need attend to.... Let your emotions come or let them go, just as God pleases, and make no account of them either way.... They really have nothing to do with the matter. They are not the indicators of your spiritual state, but are merely the indicators of your temperament or of your present physical condition."

But you all know these facts already, so I need no longer press them on your attention. From our acts and from our attitudes ceaseless inpouring currents of sensation come, which help to determine from moment to moment what our inner states shall be: that is a fundamental law of psychology which I will therefore proceed to assume.

A Viennese neurologist of considerable reputation has recently written about the Binnenleben, as he terms it, or buried life of human beings. No doctor, this writer says, can get into really profitable relations with a nervous patient until he gets some sense of what the patient's Binnenleben is, of the sort of unuttered inner atmosphere in which his consciousness dwells alone with the secrets of its prison-house. This inner personal tone is what we can't communicate or describe articulately to others; but the wraith and ghost of it, so to speak, are often what our friends and intimates feel as our most characteristic quality. In the unhealthy-minded, apart from all sorts of old regrets, ambitions checked by shames and aspirations obstructed by timidities, it consists mainly of bodily discomforts not distinctly localized by the sufferer, but breeding a general self-mistrust and sense that things are not as they should be with him. Half the thirst for alcohol that exists in the world exists simply because alcohol acts as a temporary anaesthetic and effacer to all these morbid feelings that never ought to be in a human being at all. In the healthy-minded, on the contrary, there are no fears or shames to discover; and the sensations that pour in from the organism only help to swell the general vital sense of security and readiness for anything that may turn up.

Consider, for example, the effects of a well-toned motor-apparatus, nervous and muscular, on our general personal self-consciousness, the sense of elasticity and efficiency that results. They tell us that in Norway the life of the women has lately been entirely revolutionized by the new order of muscular feelings with which the use of the ski, or long snow-shoes, as a sport for both sexes, has made the women acquainted. Fifteen years ago the Norwegian women were even more than the women of other lands votaries of the old-fashioned ideal of femininity, "the domestic angel," the "gentle and refining influence" sort of thing. Now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of Norway have been trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious creatures, for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy, and who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and delicacy of constitution, but actually taking the lead in every educational and social reform. I cannot but think that the tennis and tramping and skating habits and the bicycle-craze which are so rapidly extending among our dear sisters and daughters in this country are going also; to lead to a sounder and heartier moral tone, which will send its tonic breath through all our American life.

I hope that here in America more and more the ideal of the well-trained and vigorous body will be maintained neck by neck with that of the well-trained and vigorous mind as the two coequal halves of the higher education for men and women alike. The strength of the British Empire lies in the strength of character of the individual Englishman, taken all alone by himself. And that strength, I am persuaded, is perennially nourished and kept up by nothing so much as by the national worship, in which all classes meet, of athletic outdoor life and sport.

I recollect, years ago, reading a certain work by an American doctor on hygiene and the laws of life and the type of future humanity. I have forgotten its author's name and its title, but I remember well an awful prophecy that it contained about the future of our muscular system. Human perfection, the writer said, means ability to cope with the environment; but the environment will more and more require mental power from us, and less and less will ask for bare brute strength. Wars will cease, machines will do all our heavy work, man will become more and more a mere director of nature's energies, and less and less an exerter of energy on his own account. So that, if the homo sapiens of the future can only digest his food and think, what need will he have of well-developed muscles at all? And why, pursued this writer, should we not even now be satisfied with a more delicate and intellectual type of beauty than that which pleased our ancestors? Nay, I have heard a fanciful friend make a still further advance in this "new-man" direction. With our future food, he says, itself prepared in liquid form from the chemical elements of the atmosphere, pepsinated or half-digested in advance, and sucked up through a glass tube from a tin can, what need shall we have of teeth, or stomachs even? They may go, along with our muscles and our physical courage, while, challenging even more and more our proper admiration, will grow the gigantic domes of our crania, arching over our spectacled eyes, and animating our flexible little lips to those floods of learned and ingenious talk which will constitute our most congenial occupation.

I am sure that your flesh creeps at this apocalyptic vision. Mine certainly did so; and I cannot believe that our muscular vigor will ever be a superfluity. Even if the day ever dawns in which it will not be needed for fighting the old heavy battles against Nature, it will still always be needed to furnish the background of sanity, serenity, and cheerfulness to life, to give moral elasticity to our disposition, to round off the wiry edge of our fretfulness, and make us good-humored and easy to approach. Weakness is too apt to be what the doctors call irritable weakness. And that blessed internal peace and confidence, that acquiescentia in seipso, as Spinoza used to call it, that wells up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained human being, and soaks the indwelling soul of him with satisfaction, is, quite apart from every consideration of its mechanical utility, an element of spiritual hygiene of supreme significance.

And now let me go a step deeper into mental hygiene, and try to enlist your insight and sympathy in a cause which I believe is one of paramount patriotic importance to us Yankees. Many years ago a Scottish medical man, Dr. Clouston, a mad-doctor as they call him there, or what we should call an asylum physician (the most eminent one in Scotland), visited this country, and said something that has remained in my memory ever since. "You Americans," he said, "wear too much expression on your faces. You are living like an army with all its reserves engaged in action. The duller countenances of the British population betoken a better scheme of life. They suggest stores of reserved nervous force to fall back upon, if any occasion should arise that requires it. This inexcitability, this presence at all times of power not used, I regard," continued Dr. Clouston, "as the great safeguard of our British people. The other thing in you gives me a sense of insecurity, and you ought somehow to tone yourselves down. You really do carry too much expression, you take too intensely the trivial moments of life."

Now Dr. Clouston is a trained reader of the secrets of the soul as expressed upon the countenance, and the observation of his which I quote seems to me to mean a great deal. And all Americans who stay in Europe long enough to get accustomed to the spirit, that reigns and expresses itself there, so unexcitable as compared with ours, make a similar observation when they return to their native shores. They find a wild-eyed look upon their compatriots' faces, either of too desperate eagerness and anxiety or of too intense responsiveness and good-will. It is hard to say whether the men or the women show it most. It is true that we do not all feel about it as Dr. Clouston felt. Many of us, far from deploring it, admire it. We say: "What intelligence it shows! How different from the stolid cheeks, the codfish eyes, the slow, inanimate demeanor we have been seeing in the British Isles!" Intensity, rapidity, vivacity of appearance, are indeed with us something of a nationally accepted ideal; and the medical notion of "irritable weakness" is not the first thing suggested by them to our mind, as it was to Dr. Clouston's. In a weekly paper not very long ago I remember reading a story in which, after describing the beauty and interest of the heroine's personality, the author summed up her charms by saying that to all who looked upon her an impression as of "bottled lightning" was irresistibly conveyed.

Bottled lightning, in truth, is one of our American ideals, even of a, young girl's character! Now it is most ungracious, and it may seem to some persons unpatriotic, to criticise in public the physical peculiarities of one's own people, of one's own family, so to speak. Besides, it may be said, and said with justice, that there are plenty of bottled-lightning temperaments in other countries, and plenty of phlegmatic temperaments here; and that, when all is said and done, the more or less of tension about which I am making such a fuss is a small item in the sum total of a nation's life, and not worth solemn treatment at a time when agreeable rather than disagreeable things should be talked about. Well, in one sense the more or less of tension in our faces and in our unused muscles is a small thing: not much mechanical work is done by these contractions. But it is not always the material size of a thing that measures its importance: often it is its place and function. One of the most philosophical remarks I ever heard made was by an unlettered workman who was doing some repairs at my house many years ago. "There is very little difference between one man and another," he said, "when you go to the bottom of it. But what little there is, is very important." And the remark certainly applies to this case. The general over-contraction may be small when estimated in foot-pounds, but its importance is immense on account of its effects on the over-contracted person's spiritual life. This follows as a necessary consequence from the theory of our emotions to which I made reference at the beginning of this article. For by the sensations that so incessantly pour in from the over-tense excited body the over-tense and excited habit of mind is kept up; and the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner atmosphere never quite clears away. If you never wholly give yourself up to the chair you sit in, but always keep your leg- and body-muscles half contracted for a rise; if you breathe eighteen or nineteen instead of sixteen times a minute, and never quite breathe out at that,—what mental mood can you be in but one of inner panting and expectancy, and how can the future and its worries possibly forsake your mind? On the other hand, how can they gain admission to your mind if your brow be unruffled, your respiration calm and complete, and your muscles all relaxed?

Now what is the cause of this absence of repose, this bottled-lightning quality in us Americans? The explanation of it that is usually given is that it comes from the extreme dryness of our climate and the acrobatic performances of our thermometer, coupled with the extraordinary progressiveness of our life, the hard work, the railroad speed, the rapid success, and all the other things we know so well by heart. Well, our climate is certainly exciting, but hardly more so than that of many parts of Europe, where nevertheless no bottled-lightning girls are found. And the work done and the pace of life are as extreme in every great capital of Europe as they are here. To me both of these pretended causes are utterly insufficient to explain the facts.

To explain them, we must go not to physical geography, but to psychology and sociology. The latest chapter both in sociology and in psychology to be developed in a manner that approaches adequacy is the chapter on the imitative impulse. First Bagehot, then Tarde, then Royce and Baldwin here, have shown that invention and imitation, taken together, form, one may say, the entire warp and woof of human life, in so far as it is social. The American over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological, phenomena. They are bad habits, nothing more or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad models and the cultivation of false personal ideals. How are idioms acquired, how do local peculiarities of phrase and accent come about? Through an accidental example set by some one, which struck the ears of others, and was quoted and copied till at last every one in the locality chimed in. Just so it is with national tricks of vocalization or intonation, with national manners, fashions of movement and gesture, and habitual expressions of face. We, here in America, through following a succession of pattern-setters whom it is now impossible to trace, and through influencing each other in a bad direction, have at last settled down collectively into what, for better or worse, is our own characteristic national type,—a type with the production of which, so far as these habits go, the climate and conditions have had practically nothing at all to do.

This type; which we have thus reached by our imitativeness, we now have fixed upon us, for better or worse. Now no type can be wholly disadvantageous; but, so far as our type follows the bottled-lightning fashion, it cannot be wholly good. Dr. Clouston was certainly right in thinking that eagerness, breathlessness, and anxiety are not signs of strength: they are signs of weakness and of bad co-ordination. The even forehead, the slab-like cheek, the codfish eye, may be less interesting for the moment; but they are more promising signs than intense expression is of what we may expect of their possessor in the long run. Your dull, unhurried worker gets over a great deal of ground, because he never goes backward or breaks down. Your intense, convulsive worker breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be when you most need his help,—he may be having one of his "bad days." We say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse, and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard. I suspect that this is an immense mistake. I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in that breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and that solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is so apt to be accompanied, and from which a European who should do the same work would nine times out of ten be free. These perfectly wanton and unnecessary tricks of inner attitude and outer manner in us, caught from the social atmosphere, kept up by tradition, and idealized by many as the admirable way of life, are the last straws that break the American camel's back, the final overflowers of our measure of wear and tear and fatigue.

The voice, for example, in a surprisingly large number of us has a tired and plaintive sound. Some of us are really tired (for I do not mean absolutely to deny that our climate has a tiring quality); but far more of us are not tired at all, or would not be tired at all unless we had got into a wretched trick of feeling tired, by following the prevalent habits of vocalization and expression. And if talking high and tired, and living excitedly and hurriedly, would only enable us to do more by the way, even while breaking us down in the end, it would be different. There would be some compensation, some excuse, for going on so. But the exact reverse is the case. It is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in no hurry, and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences, who is your efficient worker; and tension and anxiety, and present and future, all mixed up together in our mind at once, are the surest drags upon steady progress and hindrances to our success. My colleague, Professor Mnsterberg, an excellent observer, who came here recently, has written some notes on America to German papers. He says in substance that the appearance of unusual energy in America is superficial and illusory, being really due to nothing but the habits of jerkiness and bad co-ordination for which we have to thank the defective training of our people. I think myself that it is high time for old legends and traditional opinions to be changed; and that, if any one should begin to write about Yankee inefficiency and feebleness, and inability to do anything with time except to waste it, he would have a very pretty paradoxical thesis to sustain, with a great many facts to quote, and a great deal of experience to appeal to in its proof.

Well, my friends, if our dear American character is weakened by all this over-tension,—and I think, whatever reserves you may make, that you will agree as to the main facts,—where does the remedy lie? It lies, of course, where lay the origins of the disease. If a vicious fashion and taste are to blame for the thing, the fashion and taste must be changed. And, though it is no small thing to inoculate seventy millions of people with new standards, yet, if there is to be any relief, that will have to be done. We must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and snap for their own sakes, and looks down upon low voices and quiet ways as dull, to one that, on the contrary, has calm for its ideal, and for their own sakes loves harmony, dignity, and ease.

So we go back to the psychology of imitation again. There is only one way to improve ourselves, and that is by some of us setting an example which the others may pick up and imitate till the new fashion spreads from east to west. Some of us are in more favorable positions than others to set new fashions. Some are much more striking personally and imitable, so to speak. But no living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody. Thackeray somewhere says of the Irish nation that there never was an Irishman so poor that he didn't have a still poorer Irishman living at his expense; and, surely, there is no human being whose example doesn't work contagiously in some particular. The very idiots at our public institutions imitate each other's peculiarities. And, if you should individually achieve calmness and harmony in your own person, you may depend upon it that a wave of imitation will spread from you, as surely as the circles spread outward when a stone is dropped into a lake.

Fortunately, we shall not have to be absolute pioneers. Even now in New York they have formed a society for the improvement of our national vocalization, and one perceives its machinations already in the shape of various newspaper paragraphs intended to stir up dissatisfaction with the awful thing that it is. And, better still than that, because more radical and general, is the gospel of relaxation, as one may call it, preached by Miss Annie Payson Call, of Boston, in her admirable little volume called Power Through Repose, a book that ought to be in the hands of every teacher and student in America of either sex. You need only be followers, then, on a path already opened up by others. But of one thing be confident: others still will follow you.

And this brings me to one more application of psychology to practical life, to which I will call attention briefly, and then close. If one's example of easy and calm ways is to be effectively contagious, one feels by instinct that the less voluntarily one aims at getting imitated, the more unconscious one keeps in the matter, the more likely one is to succeed. Become the imitable thing, and you may then discharge your minds of all responsibility for the imitation. The laws of social nature will take care of that result. Now the psychological principle on which this precept reposes is a law of very deep and widespread importance in the conduct of our lives, and at the same time a law which we Americans most grievously neglect. Stated technically, the law is this: that strong feeling about one's self tends to arrest the free association of one's objective ideas and motor processes. We get the extreme example of this in the mental disease called melancholia.

A melancholic patient is filled through and through with intensely painful emotion about himself. He is threatened, he is guilty, he is doomed, he is annihilated, he is lost. His mind is fixed as if in a cramp on these feelings of his own situation, and in all the books on insanity you may read that the usual varied flow of his thoughts has ceased. His associative processes, to use the technical phrase, are inhibited; and his ideas stand stock-still, shut up to their one monotonous function of reiterating inwardly the fact of the man's desperate estate. And this inhibitive influence is not due to the mere fact that his emotion is painful. Joyous emotions about the self also stop the association of our ideas. A saint in ecstasy is as motionless and irresponsive and one-idea'd as a melancholiac. And, without going as far as ecstatic saints, we know how in every one a great or sudden pleasure may paralyze the flow of thought. Ask young people returning from a party or a spectacle, and all excited about it, what it was. "Oh, it was fine! it was fine! it was fine!" is all the information you are likely to receive until the excitement has calmed down. Probably every one of my hearers has been made temporarily half-idiotic by some great success or piece of good fortune. "Good! GOOD! GOOD!" is all we can at such times say to ourselves until we smile at our own very foolishness.

Now from all this we can draw an extremely practical conclusion. If, namely, we wish our trains of ideation and volition to be copious and varied and effective, we must form the habit of freeing them from the inhibitive influence of reflection upon them, of egoistic pre-occupation about their results. Such a habit, like other habits, can be formed. Prudence and duty and self-regard, emotions of ambition and emotions of anxiety, have, of course, a needful part to play in our lives. But confine them as far as possible to the occasions when you are making your general resolutions and deciding on your plan of campaign, and keep them out of the details. When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good. Who are the scholars who get "rattled" in the recitation-room? Those who think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance of the act. Who are those who do recite well? Often those who are most indifferent. Their ideas reel themselves out of their memory of their own accord. Why do we hear the complaint so often that social life in New England is either less rich and expressive or more fatiguing than it is in some other parts of the world? To what is the fact, if fact it be, due unless to the over-active conscience of the people, afraid of either saying something too trivial and obvious, or something insincere, or something unworthy of one's interlocutor, or something in some way or other not adequate to the occasion? How can conversation possibly steer itself through such a sea of responsibilities and inhibitions as this? On the other hand, conversation does flourish and society is refreshing, and neither dull on the one hand nor exhausting from its efforts on the other, wherever people forget their scruples and take the brakes off their hearts, and let their tongues wag as automatically and irresponsibly as they will.

They talk much in pedagogic circles to-day about the duty of the teacher to prepare for every lesson in advance. To some extent this is useful. But we Yankees are assuredly not those to whom such a general doctrine should be preached. We are only too careful as it is. The advice I should give to most teachers would be in the words of one who is herself an admirable teacher. Prepare yourself in the subject so well that it shall be always on tap: then in the class-room trust your spontaneity and fling away all further care.

My advice to students, especially to girl-students, would be somewhat similar. Just as a bicycle-chain may be too tight, so may one's carefulness and conscientiousness be so tense as to hinder the running of one's mind. Take, for example, periods when there are many successive days of examination pending. One ounce of good nervous tone in an examination is worth many pounds of anxious study for it in advance. If you want really to do your best at an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, "I won't waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don't care an iota whether I succeed or not." Say this sincerely and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently. I have heard this advice given to a student by Miss Call, whose book on muscular relaxation I quoted a moment ago. In her later book, entitled As a Matter of Course, the gospel of moral relaxation, of dropping things from the mind, and not "caring," is preached with equal success. Not only our preachers, but our friends the theosophists and mind-curers of various religious sects are also harping on this string. And with the doctors, the Delsarteans, the various mind-curing sects, and such writers as Mr. Dresser, Prentice Mulford, Mr. Horace Fletcher, and Mr. Trine to help, and the whole band of schoolteachers and magazine-readers chiming in, it really looks as if a good start might be made in the direction of changing our American mental habit into something more indifferent and strong.

Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith; and this, of course, you also know. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth. This is charmingly illustrated by a little work with which I recently became acquainted, "The Practice of the Presence of God, the Best Ruler of a Holy Life, by Brother Lawrence, being Conversations and Letters of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, Translated from the French."[7] I extract a few passages, the conversations being given in indirect discourse. Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite friar, converted at Paris in 1666. "He said that he had been footman to M. Fieubert, the Treasurer, and that he was a great awkward fellow, who broke everything. That he had desired to be received into a monastery, thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit, and so he should sacrifice to God his life, with its pleasures; but that God had disappointed him, he having met with nothing but satisfaction in that state....

"That he had long been troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned; that all the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary; but that he had thus reasoned with himself about it: I engaged in a religious life only for the love of God, and I have endeavored to act only for Him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God. I shall have this good at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love Him ... That since then he had passed his life in perfect liberty and continual joy.

"That when an occasion of practicing some virtue offered, he addressed himself to God, saying, 'Lord, I cannot do this unless Thou enablest me'; and that then he received strength more than sufficient. That, when he had failed in his duty, he only confessed his fault, saying to God, 'I shall never do otherwise, if You leave me to myself: it is You who must hinder my failing, and mend what is amiss.' That after this he gave himself no further uneasiness about it.

"That he had been lately sent into Burgundy to buy the provision of wine for the society, which was a very unwelcome task for him, because he had no turn for business, and because he was lame, and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks. That, however, he gave himself no uneasiness about it, nor about the purchase of the wine. That he said to God, 'It was his business he was about,' and that he afterward found it well performed. That he had been sent into Auvergne, the year before, upon the same account; that he could not tell how the matter passed, but that it proved very well.