Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

Finance, Education, Engineering, Government, Literature, Labor, Medicine, Moral and Social Reform, Music, Public Press, Religion, Science and Philosophy, Temperance, Sunday Rest, and a General Department, embracing congresses not otherwise assigned. These general departments have been divided into more than one hundred divisions, in each of which a congress is to be held. Each division has its own local committee of arrangements.

Representative men from all parts of the world take part in these gatherings. They assemble for the most part in the Art Institute. The officers of the Auxiliary are Charles C. Bonney, President; Thomas B. Bryan, Vice-President; Lyman J. Gage, Treasurer; Benjamin Butterworth, Secretary.

ESSENCE OF THE CONSTITUTION.

Congress must meet at least once a year.

One State cannot undo the acts of another.

Congress may admit as many new States as desired.

One State must respect the laws and legal decisions of another.
The Constitution guarantees every citizen a speedy trial by jury.
Congress cannot pass a law to punish a crime already committed.
A State cannot exercise a power which is vested in Congress alone.
Bills for revenue can originate only in the House of Representatives.
A person committing a felony in one State cannot find refuge in

another.

United States Senators are chosen by the legislatures of the States by joint ballot.

The Constitution of the United States forbids excessive bail or cruel punishment.

When Congress passes a bankruptcy law it annuls all the State laws on that subject.

Treaties with foreign countries are made by the President and ratified by the Senate.

In the United States Senate Rhode Island or Nevada has an equal voice with New York.

Writing alone does not constitute treason against the United States. There must be an overt act.

Congress cannot lay any disabilities on the children of a person convicted of crime or misdemeanor.

The Territories each send a delegate to Congress, who has the right of debate, but not the right to vote.

The Vice-President, who ex-officio presides over the Senate, has no vote in that body except on a tie ballot.

An act of Congress cannot become a law over the President's veto except on a two-thirds vote of both houses.

An officer of the Government cannot accept title of nobility, order or honor without the permission of Congress.

Money lost in the mails cannot be recovered from the Government. Registering a letter does not insure its contents.

It is the House of Representatives that may impeach the President for any crime, and the Senate hears the accusation.

If the President holds a bill longer than ten days while Congress is still in session, it becomes a law without his signature.

Silver coin of denominations less than $1 is not a legal tender for more than $5.00. Copper and nickel coin is not legal tender.

The term of a Congressman is two years, but a Congressman may be re-elected to as many successive terms as his constituents may wish.

Amendments to the Constitution require a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress and must be ratified by at least three-fourths of the

States.

When the militia is called out in the service of the General Government, they pass out of the control of the various States under the command of the President.

The President of the United States must be thirty-five years of age; a United States Senator, thirty; a Congressman, twenty-five. The President must have been a resident of the United States fourteen years.

A grand jury is a secret tribunal, and may hear only one side of a It simply decides whether there is good reason to hold for trial. It consists of twenty-four men, twelve of whom may indict.

case.

A naturalized citizen cannot become President or Vice-President of the United States. A male child born abroad of American parents has an equal chance to become President with one born on American soil.

A DOZEN AMERICAN WONDERS.

Croton Aqueduct, in New York City.

City Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The largest park in the world.

Lake Superior, the largest lake in the world.
Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky.

Niagara Falls. A sheet of water three-quarters of a mile wide, with

a fall of 175 feet.

Natural Bridge, over Cedar Creek, in Virginia.

New State Capitol, at Albany, N. Y.

New York and Brooklyn Bridge.

The Central Park, in New York City.

Washington Monument, Washington, D. C., 555 feet high.

Yosemite Valley, California; 57 miles from Coulterville. A valley from 8 to 10 miles long, and about one mile wide. Has very steep slopes about 3,500 feet high; has a perpendicular precipice 3,089 feet high; a rock almost perpendicular, 3,270 feet high; and waterfalls from 700 to 1,000 feet.

Jackson Park, Chicago, with the World's Columbian Fair of 1893.

THE AMERICAN NOBILITY.

Whoe'er amidst the sons

Of reason, valor, liberty, and virtue
Displays distinguished merit, is a noble
Of Nature's own creating.

THOMSON,

TIME AND ITS LANDMARKS.

Time's the king of men

For he's their parent, and he is their grave,
And gives them what he will, not what they crave.

-SHAKSPEARE.

DATES AND FACTS TO REMEMBER.

Twenty-four hour clock time is gaining in favor.

Fifteen degress of longitude represent one hour of time.

All over Western Canada 4 P. M. is called "sixteen o'clock." The axial rotation of the earth is the measure of time everywhere. The astronomers of Egypt were the first to give names to the days. It takes just one second of time for electricity to travel 288,000 miles.

Fenelon says suggestively: "God never gives us two moments together."

A vessel sailing eastwards across the Pacific has two consecutive days of the same name and date.

The old advice to "seize time by the forelock" is from Pittacus, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece.

The first clock mentioned in history was a gift from the Sultan of Egypt to Emperor Frederic II., A. D. 1232.

A good instrument for measuring short spaces of time, invented by Wheatstone in 1840, is called the chronoscope.

It was Montgomery who said that "man cannot make a single second of time, but can waste whole years of it."

Time will bring to light, says Horace, whatever is hidden; it will conceal and cover up what is now shining with the greatest luster.

We understand by a generation a single succession in natural descent, the children of the same parents; in years three generations are accounted to make a century.

The sun-dial, as a time-measurer, was known in very early ages, and is mentioned in Scripture 713 B.C. A sun-dial only agrees with a clock on four days in the year.

It is the science of chronology which arranges the events of history in their order of time. The earliest modern works on the subject appear to have been compiled by the Benedictines, 1783 et seq.

If a railway were built to the sun, and trains upon it were run at the rate of 30 miles an hour, day and night, without a stop, it would require 350 years to make the journey from the earth to the sun,

A chronograph is an instrument noting time within the fraction of a second. By the electrical chronograph, used by astronomers, the transit of a star can be recorded to within one-hundredth of a second.

The Christian era begins with the birth of Christ. Its beginning coincides with the middle of the 4th year of the 194th Olympiad; the 753rd of the building of Rome, and the 4714th of the Julian era.

The clepsydra is an instrument to measure time by the trickling or escape of water. In Babylonia, India and Egypt, the clepsydra was used from before the dawn of history, especially in astronomical obser

vations.

Decoration Day, or Memorial Day, in the United States, is a day set apart on which the graves of soldiers are visited and decorated with flowers by surviving comrades and friends. It has been created a

national holiday.

There is no such thing as time, argues Leigh Richmond, "it is but space occupied by incident; it is the same to eternity as matter is to infinite space-a portion out of the immense, occupied with something within the sphere of mortal sense."

Thanksgiving Day was first established as a holiday in the year 1622. The custom now obtains throughout the United States, the last Thursday in November being usually the thanksgiving day appointed by the President for the mercies of the past year.

Watches were invented at Nuremberg prior to 1500, and were brought to England from Germany in 1577. The spiral hair-spring was invented by Dr. Hooke in 1651, the compensation balance by John Harrison in 1726, and the English lever escapement by Thomas Mudge in 1766.

We call that a Chronicle in which events of history are treated in the order of time. A chronicle differs from annals in being more connected and full, the latter merely recording individual occurrences under the successive dates. Most of the older histories were called chronicles.

The familiar hour glass is an instrument made up of two glass globes placed one above another. From the upper globe, through a small hole of communication, there runs a quantity of fine sand. The name is derived from the time the sand takes to run from the upper to the lower glass.

In America Arbor Day is a day set apart for the planting of shade trees, shrubs, etc., by school children. Millions of trees have been planted since its institution. The first Friday in May has been selected for this purpose in Canada; in the United States, different days are chosen in the several States.

Clocks are of ancient date, one having been made by Pacificus, archdeacon of Verona, in the ninth century. Clocks with wheels were used in monasteries about the twelfth century, and were made to strike the hour. Pendulum said to have been first applied by Harris, 1641; dead-beat pendulum invented, 1700; and the compensating pendulum, 1715.

The chronometer is an instrument for measuring time, now generally applied only to those watches specially made for determining longitude at sea. A chronometer which gained a prize of $100,000, offered by the British Board of Longitude for a timepiece to ascertain longitude within thirty miles, was made in 1761, by John Harrison, of Foulby, near Pontefract.

The Japanese divide the day into six day hours, from the rising to the setting of the sun, and six night hours, from sunset to sunrise. Accordingly, although the dials of their clocks are figured with twelve numerals, the movement of the hands do not correspond with our own, these movements being regulated by ingenious mechanism to correspond with the variations in the length of days and nights.

July 15 was called St. Swithin's Day from the legend of St. Swithin, Bishop of Winchester, the tutor of King Alfred. To signify his displeasure at an attempt to bury him in the chancel of the minster instead of the churchyard, according to his directions, the bishop is said to have caused rain to fall for forty days. From this the popular superstition arose that if rain falls on July 15 it will continue for forty days.

A watch on shipboard is a division of the crew into two- or if it be a large crew into three-sections, that one set of men may have charge of the vessel while the others rest. The day and night are divided into watches of four hours each, except the period from 4 to 8 P. M., which is divided into two dog-watches of two hours' duration each. The object of the dog-watches is to prevent the same men being always on duty at the same hours.

Another name for Palm Sunday is Fig Sunday. The term is derived from the custom in some countries of eating figs on this day, as snapdragons on Christmas Eve, plum-pudding on Christmas Day, oranges and barley sugar on St. Valentine's Eve, pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, salt cod-fish on Ash Wednesday, frumenti on Mothering Sunday (Midlent), cross-buns on Good Friday, gooseberry tart on Whit Sunday, goose on Michaelmas Day, nuts on All-Hallows, and so on.

A Cycle in astronomy and mathematical chronology is a period or interval of time in which certain phenomena always recur in the same order. There are two great natural cycles, that of the sun and that of the moon. The solar cycle is a period of twenty-eight Julian years, after which the same days of the week recur on the same days of the year. The lunar or metonic cycle consists of nineteen years or two hundred and thirty-five lunations, after which the successive new moons happen on the same days of the year as during the previous cycle.

Christmas Day, a festival of the Christian church, observed on the 25th of December in memory of the birth of Jesus Christ. There is, however, a difficulty in accepting this as the date of the nativity, December being the height of the rainy season in Judea, when neither flocks nor shepherds could have been at night in the fields of Bethlehem. The Christian communities which keep Christmas, however, would probably agree in laying more stress on keeping a day in memory of the Nativity, than on success in fixing the actual and precise date of the event.

The third season of the year, between summer and winter, is called autumn. Astronomically, in the northern hemisphere, it begins at the autumnal equinox, when the sun enters Libra, 22d September, and ends at the winter solstice, when the sun enters Capricorn, 21st December; but popularly, in Great Britain, it comprises the three months, August, September, and October. According to Littré, it extends in France from the end of August to the first fortnight of November; according to Webster, in North America it includes the months of September, October, and November. In the southern hemisphere it corresponds in time to the northern spring.

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »