B..., the mouth-piece of the debating-clubs, noisy, vaporous, and democratic; and so following. — DANA : Two Years before the Mast.

2. A recent judicious French writer (M. Edouard Laboulaye), though greatly admiring the character of Washington, denies him the brilliant military genius of Julius Cæsar. For my own part, considering the disparity of the means at their command respectively and of their scale of operations, I believe that after times will, on the score of military capacity, assign as high a place to the patriot chieftain who founded the Republic of America, as to the ambitious usurper who overturned the liberties of Rome. Washington would not most certainly have carried an unprovoked and desolating war into the provinces of Gallia, chopping off the right hands of whole populations guilty of no crime but that of defending their homes; he would not have thrown his legions into Britain as Cæsar did, though the barbarous natives had never heard of his name. Though, to meet the invaders of his country, he could push his way across the broad Delaware, through drifting masses of ice in a December night, he could not, I grant, in defiance of the laws of his country, have spurred his horse across the "little Rubicon" beneath the mild skies of an Ausonian winter. It was not talent which he wanted for brilliant military achievement; he wanted a willingness to shed the blood of fellow-men for selfish ends; he wanted unchastened ambition; he wanted an ear deaf as the adder's to the cry of suffering humanity; he wanted a remorseless thirst for false glory; he wanted an iron heart. EVERETT: The Character of Washington.

EXERCISE 136. (Theme.) Write a comparison of the characters of two actual persons, com

paring both their appearance, their acts, and their effect on other persons, so far as the appearance, acts, and effects really show character. Resist the temptation to establish merely fanciful points of comparison.

Read aloud the following:

1. The air-liquefying apparatus used by Tripler in the earlier part of 1899 may be described in a general way as consisting of three steel cylinders, through which the air passed successively, being compressed by a plunger in each. As the plunger descended near the middle of the cylinder, the air, very much reduced in bulk, escaped through a valve into a coil of pipe that discharged into the next cylinder, the plunger in which was at the moment raised. Then the process was repeated on a fresh supply of air in the first cylinder; while the first charge passed on from the second cylinder to the third, where it was subjected to a still stronger pressure, estimated to be from 2500 to 3000 pounds. Of necessity the cylinders especially the last in the series- must be exceedingly strong. In fact, its wall of iron or soft steel plate was about five inches in thickness, with bands and hoops of steel in addition.

From the third cylinder the air, compressed to the last extremity, rushes out of the valve into the cooling coil, and from this to the bottom of a smaller closed cylinder, which acts as a purifier. From this it passes out by a pipe at the top, which ascends vertically about fifteen feet, then turns and descends an equal distance, where it finds vent by a valve of very small aperture, and controlled by hand, first into a small chamber, then through another valve into a larger chamber, which encloses it.

Here it expands, and passing upward and then downward through a large pipe that encloses the smaller one just described, finds vent at the open end near the purifier. There is an intensely chilling effect from the expansion of the compressed air in this larger pipe, by which the temperature of the incoming compressed air in the small interior pipe is brought down to the critical temperature (182 degrees Fahr.) at which it is possible by pressure to reduce the air (which is like a thin vapor at this stage) to a liquid. Accordingly, after a little while, air in a liquid form begins to trickle down through the needle valve into the smaller chamber, then into the larger one surrounding the first. From the faucet at the bottom of this it may finally be drawn in a stream. GEORGE J. VARNEY, in the Journal of Education.

2. It is difficult to ventilate a small room without making a draft, but, next to the chimney, the upper sash is the simplest ventilator, and should not be immovable, as it is in many small houses. A board about five inches

wide under the lower sash will make a current of air between the upper and lower sashes, and, better still, two pieces of elbow pipe with dampers, fixed in the board, will throw a good current of air upward into the room. Another ventilator can be made by tacking a strip of loosely woven material to the upper sash and to the top of the window-frame. When the upper sash is dropped, the stuff is drawn taut over the opening, and, while permitting air to pass through, breaks the current. - - MARY E. RICHMOND: Friendly Visiting among the Poor.

3. The construction of my house had been the subject of much study. I wished to attain a minimum of weight and size with a maximum of strength, warmth, and comfort.

The interior dimensions of the house were to be twenty-one feet in length, twelve feet in width, and eight

feet in height from floor to ceiling. As finally completed, the house consisted of an inner and an outer shell, separated by an air-space, formed by the frames of the house and varying from ten inches at the sides to over three feet in the centre of the roof.

On the outside of these frames was attached the outer air-tight shell, composed of a sheathing of closely fitting boards and two thicknesses of tarred paper. To the inside of these frames was fastened the inner shell, composed of thick trunk boards, and made air-tight by pasting all the joints with heavy brown paper. This inner shell was lined throughout with heavy red Indian blankets.

This made the interior as warm and cosey in appear-. ance as could be desired, amply comfortable for summer and early-fall weather. It was still, however, not in a condition to protect us from the indescribable fury of the storms of the arctic winter night, and temperatures of half a hundred degrees below zero.

To render it impregnable to these, a wall was built entirely around the house, about four feet distant from it.

The foundation of this wall was stones, turf, empty barrels; its upper portion was built of the wooden boxes containing my tinned supplies, piled in regular courses like blocks of stone. The boxes had intentionally been made of the same width and depth, though of varying lengths, to fit them for this use.

The corridor so made was roofed with canvas, extending from the side of the house to the top of the wall, and later, when the snow came, it, as well as the roof of the house itself, was covered in with snow, and the outside of the walls was thickly banked with the same material. By this arrangement of the boxes I avoided the necessity of using any portion of the house for storage; the contents of every box was immediately and conveniently accessible, as if on the shelves of a cupboard; and the

rampart thus formed protected the house in a surprising degree from the stress of the winter's cold. R. F. PEARY: Northward over the "Great Ice" (adapted).

Show that each of the preceding selections is an exposition. Which selection makes use of description, but not of narration? which of personal narrative? which of generalized narrative ?

EXERCISE 137. (Theme.) Write an exposition of some machine or structure, indicating the principles of its building as affected by the purpose, circumstances, etc., of the construction. If you have yourself constructed the device, you may find personal narration a useful means of exposition.

Read aloud the following:

1. Lay bare your arm and stretch it straight. Make two ink dots half an inch or an inch apart, exactly opposite the elbow. Bend your arm, the dots approach each other, and are finally brought together. Let the two dots represent the two sides of a crevasse at the bottom of an ice-fall; the bending of the arm resembles the bending of the ice, and the closing up of the dots resembles the closing of the fissures. - TYNDALL: The Forms of Water.

2. It seems to be the present scientific conclusion that mountains are not formed so much by volcanic action as by the folds or laps in the crust made by the contraction of the earth as it grows older and colder. The illustra