The ups and downs of the world concern the beggar no longer.
Life's a tumble-about thing of ups and downs.
A rose is a rose is a rose. Just ask Jean Marsh, known to millions of PBS viewers in the '70s as Rose, the maid on the LWT export "Upstairs,
with Rose she's forever identified. So much so that she even likes to
joke about having one named after her, a distinction not without its
drawbacks. "I was very flattered when I heard about it, but when I looked
good in beds; better up against a wall.' I want to tell you that's not
true. I'm very good in beds as well."
The breeding and training of a successful kennel is a precarious matter; and the most unaccountable ups and downs of fortune often occur in a courser's career. At a meeting an agreed-on even number of entries are made for each stake, and the ties drawn by lot. After the first round the winner of the first tie is opposed to the winner of the second, and so on until the last two dogs left in compete for victory; but the same owner's greyhounds are "guarded" as far as it is possible to do so. A staff of beaters drive the hares out of their coverts or other hiding-places, whilst the slipper has the pair of dogs in hand, and slips them simultaneously by an arrangement of nooses, when they have both sighted a hare promising a good course. The judge accompanies on horseback, and the six points whereby he decides a course are--(1) speed; (2) the go-by, or when a greyhound starts a clear length behind his opponent, passes him in the straight run, and gets a clear length in front; (3) the turn, where the hare turns at not less than a right angle; (4) the wrench, where the hare turns at less than a right angle; (5) the kill; (6) the trip, or unsuccessful effort to kill. He may return a "no course" as his verdict if the dogs have not been fairly tried together, or an "undecided course" if he considers their merits equal. The open Waterloo meeting, held at Altcar every spring,--the name being taken from its being originated by the proprietor of the Waterloo Hotel, Liverpool,--is now the recognized fixture for the decision of the coursing championship, and the Waterloo Cup (1836) is the "Blue Riband" of the leash. In the United States, several British colonies, and other countries, the name has been adopted, and Waterloo Coursing Cups are found there as in England. In America an American Coursing Board controls the sport, the chief meetings being in North and South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota. Entry: COURSING
FRASER, SIR WILLIAM AUGUSTUS, Bart. (1826-1898), English politician, author and collector, was born on the 10th of February 1826, the son of Sir James John Fraser, 3rd baronet, a colonel of the 7th Hussars, who had served on Wellington's staff at Waterloo. He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, entered the 1st Life Guards in 1847, but retired with a captain's rank in 1852. He then set about entering parliament, and the ups and downs of his political career were rather remarkable. He was returned for Barnstaple in 1852, but the election was declared void on account of bribery, and the constituency was disfranchised for two years. At the election of 1857 Sir William, who had meantime been defeated at Harwich, was again returned at Barnstaple. He was, however, defeated in 1859, but was elected in 1863 at Ludlow. This seat he held for only two years, when he was again defeated and did not re-enter parliament until 1874, when be was returned for Kidderminster, a constituency he represented for six years, when he retired. He was a familiar figure at the Carlton Club, always ready with a copious collection of anecdotes of Wellington, Disraeli and Napoleon III. He died on the 17th of August 1898. He was an assiduous collector of relics; and his library was sold for some £20,000. His own books comprise _Words on Wellington_ (1889), _Disraeli and his Day_ (1891), _Hic et Ubique_ (1893), _Napoleon III._ (1896) and the _Waterloo Ball_ (1897). Entry: FRASER
The history of Brabant is connected with that of the duchy of Lower Lorraine (q.v.), which became in the course of the 11th century split up into a number of small feudal states. The counts of Hainaut, Namur, Luxemburg and Limburg asserted their independence, and the territory of Liége passed to the bishops of that city. The remnant of the duchy, united since 1100 with the margraviate of Antwerp, was conferred in 1106 by the emperor Henry V., with the title of duke of Lower Lorraine, upon Godfrey (Godefroid) I., "the Bearded," count of Louvain and Brussels. His title was disputed by Count Henry of Limburg, and for three generations the representatives of the rival houses contested the possession of the ducal dignity in Lower Lorraine. The issue was decided in favour of the house of Louvain by Duke Godfrey III. in 1159. His son, Henry I., "the Warrior" (1183-1235), abandoned the title of duke of Lower Lorraine and assumed in 1190 that of duke of Brabant. His successors were Henry II., "the Magnanimous" (1235-1248), Henry III., "le Debonnair" (1248-1261), and John I., "the Victorious" (1261-1294). These were all able rulers. Their usual place of residence was Louvain. John I., in 1283 bought the duchy of Limburg from Adolf of Berg, and secured his acquisition by defeating and slaying his competitor, Henry of Luxemburg, at the battle of Woeringen (June 5, 1288). His own son, John II., "the Pacific" (1294-1312), bestowed liberties upon his subjects by the charter of Cortenberg. This charter laid the foundation of Brabantine freedom. By it the imposition of grants (_beden_) and taxes was strictly limited and regulated, and its execution was entrusted to a council appointed by the duke for life (four nobles, ten burghers) whose duty it was to consider all complaints and to see that the conditions laid down by the charter concerning the administration of justice and finance were not infringed. He was succeeded by his son, John III., "the Triumphant" (1312-1355), who succeeded in maintaining his position in spite of formidable risings in Louvain and Brussels, and a league formed against him by his princely neighbours, but he had a hard struggle to face, and many ups and downs of fortune. He it was to whom Brabant owed the great charter of its liberties, called _La joyeuse entrée_, because it was granted on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Johanna (Jeanne) with Wenzel (Wenceslaus) of Luxemburg, and was proclaimed on their state entry into Brussels (1356). Entry: BRABANT
After thinking a little Samsonov told the lad to take the visitor to the drawing-room, and sent the old woman downstairs with a summons to his younger son to come upstairs to him at once. This younger son, a man over six foot and of exceptional physical strength, who was closely-shaven and dressed in the European style, though his father still wore a kaftan and a beard, came at once without a comment. All the family trembled before the father. The old man had sent for this giant, not because he was afraid of the "captain" (he was by no means of a timorous temper), but in order to have a witness in case of any emergency. Supported by his son and the servant-lad, he waddled at last into the drawing-room. It may be assumed that he felt considerable curiosity. The drawing-room in which Mitya was awaiting him was a vast, dreary room that laid a weight of depression on the heart. It had a double row of windows, a gallery, marbled walls, and three immense chandeliers with glass lusters covered with shades.
St. John arrived first. I had entreated him to keep quite clear of the house till everything was arranged: and, indeed, the bare idea of the commotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within its walls sufficed to scare him to estrangement. He found me in the kitchen, watching the progress of certain cakes for tea, then baking. Approaching the hearth, he asked, "If I was at last satisfied with housemaid's work?" I answered by inviting him to accompany me on a general inspection of the result of my labours. With some difficulty, I got him to make the tour of the house. He just looked in at the doors I opened; and when he had wandered upstairs and downstairs, he said I must have gone through a great deal of fatigue and trouble to have effected such considerable changes in so short a time: but not a syllable did he utter indicating pleasure in the improved aspect of his abode.
Here there was a frantic noise upstairs once more; several people seemed to be rushing downstairs at once.
"It was only yesterday that the chance came. I may tell you that, besides Mr. Rucastle, both Toller and his wife find something to do in these deserted rooms, and I once saw him carrying a large black linen bag with him through the door. Recently he has been drinking hard, and yesterday evening he was very drunk; and when I came upstairs there was the key in the door. I have no doubt at all that he had left it there. Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle were both downstairs, and the child was with them, so that I had an admirable opportunity. I turned the key gently in the lock, opened the door, and slipped through.
When we left the dining-room, she proposed to show me over the rest of the house; and I followed her upstairs and downstairs, admiring as I went; for all was well arranged and handsome. The large front chambers I thought especially grand: and some of the third-storey rooms, though dark and low, were interesting from their air of antiquity. The furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to time been removed here, as fashions changed: and the imperfect light entering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years old; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of palm branches and cherubs' heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of venerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated, on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been coffin-dust. All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of memory. I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings,--all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight.
It was well that he did so, for it is an error to suppose that the belt-sewer has two outlets, the one in the direction of Bercy, the other towards Passy, and that it is, as its name indicates, the subterranean girdle of the Paris on the right bank. The Grand Sewer, which is, it must be remembered, nothing else than the old brook of Menilmontant, terminates, if one ascends it, in a blind sack, that is to say, at its ancient point of departure which was its source, at the foot of the knoll of Menilmontant. There is no direct communication with the branch which collects the waters of Paris beginning with the Quartier Popincourt, and which falls into the Seine through the Amelot sewer above the ancient Isle Louviers. This branch, which completes the collecting sewer, is separated from it, under the Rue Menilmontant itself, by a pile which marks the dividing point of the waters, between upstream and downstream. If Jean Valjean had ascended the gallery he would have arrived, after a thousand efforts, and broken down with fatigue, and in an expiring condition, in the gloom, at a wall. He would have been lost.
_The Evolution of the Modern Hospital._--The evolution of the modern hospital affords one of the most marvellous evidences of the advance of scientific and humanitarian principles which the world has ever seen. At the outset hospitals were probably founded by the healthy more for their own comfort than out of any regard for the sick. Nowadays the healthy, whilst they realize that the more efficient they can make the hospital, the more certain, in the human sense, is their own chance of prolonged life and health, are, as the progress of the League of Mercy has shown in recent years, genuinely anxious for the most part to do something as individuals in the days of health in the cause of the sick. Formerly the hospital was merely a building or buildings, very often unsuitable for the purposes to which it was put, where sick and injured people were retained and more frequently than not died. In other words the hygienic condition, the methods of treatment and the hospital atmosphere were all so relatively unsatisfactory as to yield a mortality in serious cases of 40%. Nowadays, despite, or possibly because of, the fact that operative interference is the rule rather than the exception in the treatment of hospital patients, and in consequence of the introduction of antiseptic and aseptic methods, the mortality in hospitals is, in all the circumstances, relatively less, and probably materially less, than it is even amongst patients who are attended in their own homes. Originally hospitals were unsystematic, crowded, ill-organized necessities which wise people refused to enter, if they had any voice in the matter. At the present time in all large cities, and in crowded communities in civilized countries, great hospitals have been erected upon extensive sites which are so planned as to constitute in fact a village with many hundreds of inhabitants. This type of modern hospital has common characteristics. A multitude of separate buildings are dotted over the site, which may cover 20 acres or upwards. In one such institution, within an area of 20 acres, there are 6 m. of drains, 29 m. of water and steam pipes, 3 m. of roof gutters, 42 m. of electric wires, and 42 separate buildings, which to all intents and purposes constitute a series of distinct, isolated hospitals, in no case containing more than forty-six patients. On the continent of Europe buildings of this class are usually of one storey; in the United States, owing to the difficulty of obtaining suitable sites and for reasons of economy, some competent authorities strenuously advocate high buildings with many storeys for town hospitals. In England the majority have two to three storeys each, the ward unit containing a ward for twenty beds and two isolation wards for one and two beds respectively. The two storeys in modern fever hospitals, however, are absolutely distinct--that is, there is no internal staircase going from one ward to the others, for each is entered separately from the outside. This system carries to its extreme limits the principle of separating the patients as much as possible into small groups; the acute cases are usually treated in the upper ward, and as they become convalescent are removed downstairs. In this way the necessity for an entirely separate convalescent block is done away with and the patients are kept under the same charge nurse, an arrangement which promotes necessary discipline. The unit of these hospitals is the pavilion, not the ward, and consists of an acute ward, a convalescent ward, separation wards, nurses' duty rooms, store-rooms for linen, an open-air balcony upstairs into which beds can be wheeled in suitable weather, and a large airing-ground for convalescent patients directly accessible from the downstairs ward. Each of the pavilions is raised above the ground level, so that air can circulate freely underneath. The wall, floor and air spaces in the scarlet fever wards of one of these hospitals are respectively 12 ft., 156 ft. and 2028 ft. per bed; and in the enteric and diphtheria wards they have been increased to 15 ft., 195 ft. and 2535 ft. respectively. The provision of so large a floor and linear space, especially in the diphtheria wards, is an experiment the effect of which will be watched with considerable interest. A building of this type is a splendid example of the separate pavilion hospital, and is doing great service in the treatment of fevers wherever it has been introduced. Some idea of a hospital village, some of the wards of which we have been describing, may be gathered from the circumstances that it costs from £300,000 to £400,000, that it usually contains from 500 to 700 beds, and that the staff numbers from 350 to 500 persons. The medical superintendent lives in a separate house of his own. The nurses are provided with a home, consisting of several blocks of buildings under the control of the matron; the charge nurses usually occupy the main block; where the dining and general sitting-rooms are placed; the day assistant-nurses another block; and lastly, by a most excellent arrangement, the night nurses, 80 to 120 in number, have one whole block entirely given up to their use. The female servants have a second home under the control of the housekeeper, and the male servants occupy a third home under the supervision of the steward. The two main ideas aimed at are to disconnect the houses occupied by the staff from the infected area, and to place the members of each division of the staff together, but in separate buildings, under their respective heads. These objects are highly to be commended, as they have important bearings upon the well-being and discipline of the whole establishment and constitute a lesson for all who have to do with buildings where a great number of people are constantly employed. Entry: HOSPITAL
At Riga there is a floating pontoon bridge over the Duna. It consists of fourteen rafts, 105 ft. in length, each supported by two pontoons placed 64 ft. apart. The pairs of rafts are joined by three baulks 15 ft. long laid in parallel grooves in the framing. Two spans are arranged for opening easily. The total length is 1720 ft. and the width 46 ft. The pontoons are of iron, 85½ ft. in length, and their section is elliptical, 10½ ft. horizontal and 12 ft. vertical. The displacement of each pontoon is 180 tons and its weight 22 tons. The mooring chains, weighing 22 lb per ft., are taken from the upstream end of each pontoon to a downstream screw pile mooring and from the downstream end to an upstream screw pile. Entry: 5
MAGDEBURG, a city of Germany, capital of the Prussian province of Saxony, a fortress of the first rank and one of the principal commercial towns of the German Empire. It lies in a broad and fertile plain, mainly on the left bank of the Elbe, 88 m. S.W. from Berlin and at the junction of main lines to Leipzig, Brunswick, Cassel and Hamburg. Pop. (1885), 159,520; (1890), 202,234; (1905), 240,661. It consists of the town proper, and of the five suburbs of Friedrichstadt, Wilhelmstadt, Neustadt, Sudenburg and Buckau; the last four are separated from the town by the ramparts and glacis, but are all included within the new line of advanced bastions, while Friedrichstadt lies on the right bank of the river. In the Elbe, between the old town and the Friedrichstadt, lies an island whereon stands the citadel; this is united with both banks by bridges. With the exception of the Breite Weg, a handsome thoroughfare running from north to south, the streets of the town proper are narrow and crooked. Along the Elbe, however, extend fine promenades, the Fürstenwall and the Fürsten Üfer. To the south of the inner town is the Friedrich Wilhelms Garten, a beautiful park laid out on the site of the celebrated convent of Berge, which was founded in 968 and suppressed in 1809. By far the most important building in Magdeburg is the cathedral, dedicated to SS Maurice and Catherine, a handsome and massive structure of the 14th century, exhibiting an interesting blending of Romanesque and Gothic architecture. The two fine western towers were completed about 1520. The interior contains the tombs of the emperor Otto the Great and his wife Edith, an English princess, and the fine monument of Archbishop Ernest (d. 1513), executed in 1495 by Peter Vischer of Nüremberg. The Liebfrauenkirche, the oldest church in Magdeburg, is an interesting Romanesque edifice of the 12th and 13th centuries, which was restored in 1890-1891. The chief secular buildings are the town-hall (Rathaus), built in 1691 and enlarged in 1866, the government offices, the palace of justice, the central railway station and the exchange. The Breite Weg and the old market contain numerous fine gable-ended private houses in the style of the Renaissance. In front of the town-hall stands an equestrian statue of Otto the Great, erected about 1290. The modern streets are spacious, and the houses well-built though monotonous. There are two theatres, an agricultural college, an art school, several gymnasia, a commercial and other schools, an observatory, and two fine hospitals. The first place amongst the industries is taken by the ironworks (one being a branch of the Krupp firm, the Grusonwerke, employing about 4000 hands), which produce naval armour and munitions of war. Of almost equal importance are the sugar refineries and chicory factories. Then come establishments for making tobacco, gloves, chocolate, artificial manure, cement, varnish, chemicals and pottery. There are also distilleries and breweries, and factories for the manufacture of cotton and silk goods. Magdeburg is the central market in Germany for sugar and chicory, but trades extensively also in cereals, fruit, vegetables, groceries, cattle, horses, wool, cloth, yarn, leather, coal and books. A new winter harbour, made at a cost of £400,000, facilitates the river traffic along the Elbe. Three million tons of merchandise pass Magdeburg, going upstream, and nearly 1 million tons, going downstream, annually. Magdeburg is the headquarters of the IV. corps of the German army and the seat of the provincial court of appeal and administrative offices, and of a Lutheran consistory. Entry: MAGDEBURG
The site selected for the great Nile dam was at the head of the First Cataract above Assuan. A dyke of syenite granite here crosses the valley, so hard that the river had nowhere scoured a deep channel through it, and so it was found possible to construct the dam entirely in the open air, without the necessity of laying under-water foundations. The length of the dam is about 6400 ft.--nearly 1¼ m. The greatest head of water in it is 65 ft. It is pierced by 140 under-sluices of 150 sq. ft. each, and by 40 upper-sluices, each of 75 sq. ft. These, when fully open, are capable of discharging the ordinary maximum Nile flood of 350,000 cub. ft. per second, with a velocity of 15.6 ft. per second and a head of 6.6 ft. The top width of the dam is 23 ft., the bottom width at the deepest part about 82 ft. On the left flank of the dam there is a canal, provided with four locks, each 262 by 31 ft. in area, so that navigation is possible at all seasons. The storage capacity of the reservoir is about 3,750,000 millions of cub. ft., which creates a lake extending up the Nile Valley for about 200 m. The reservoir is filled yearly by March; after that the volume reaching the reservoir from the south is passed on through the sluices. In May, or earlier when the river is late in rising, when the demand for water increases, first the upper and then the under sluices are gradually opened, so as to increase the river supply, until July, when all the gates are open, to allow of the free passage of the flood. On the 10th of December 1902 this magnificent work was completed. The engineer who designed it was Sir W. Willcocks. The contractors were Messrs John Aird & Co., the contract price being £2,000,000. The financial treaties in which the Egyptian government were bound up prevented their ever paying so large a sum as this within five years; but a company was formed in London to advance periodically the sum due to the contractors, on receipt from the government of Egypt of promissory notes to pay sixty half-yearly instalments of £78,613, beginning on the 1st of July 1903. Protective works downstream of the dam were completed in 1906 at a cost of about £E304,000. It had been at first intended to raise the dam to a height which would have involved the submergence, for some months of every year, of the Philae temples, situated on an island just upstream of the dam. Had the natives of Egypt been asked to choose between the preservation of Ptolemy's famed temple and the benefit to be derived from a considerable additional depth of water storage, there can be no question that they would have preferred the latter; but they were not consulted, and the classical sentiment and artistic beauty of the place, skilfully pleaded by archaeologists and artists, prevailed. In 1907, however, it was decided to carry out the plan as originally proposed and raise the dam 26 ft. higher. This would increase the storage capacity 2½ times, or to about 9,375,000 millions of cubic feet. Entry: IV