The greatest achievement of the telephone is talking over the six hundred and fifty miles between New York and Cleveland. To make the test complete, it was asked in New York that something be read in Cleveland from the Herald of that morning. Several items were read and written down at the New York end of the line. A day or two following, on receipt of the Cleveland paper, the items were compared and found to correspond exactly. The wire used on this line is of recent invention, composed of steel and copper, and remarkable for its conductivity. This great enterprise has been accomplished by the Postal Telegraph Company, who are finishing a line from Cleveland to Chicago. By the time The Chautauquan for June is issued, New York will probably be able to talk to Chicago—one thousand miles distant.
The great statue of Liberty is affording the committee some trouble. They have eighty thousand dollars with which to commence the erection of the pedestal, but no engineer has been found willing to undertake the work. The statue weighs about eighty tons, and presents an enormous surface to the wind, while its pedestal is not large. How to secure it becomes a problem. The American Architect gives a method used in Japan for securing the light pagoda towers. A pendulum is hung from the top of the tower, and reaches nearly to the floor. This method was used by Sir Christopher Wren in securing the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, a heavy wooden framework being suspended, free to swing in any direction. The Architect advises a trial of this plan for the statue.
Julian Hawthorne has recently given us three inscriptions for the modern novelists. They will be useful to many others. Here they are: “Be cultured. Be cultured, ever more be cultured. Be not too cultured.”
The Vanderbilt ball is said to have cost twice the amount that the city of Moscow has devoted to the coronation of the czar. It is not pleasant to reflect that the most prominent feature in American social life is extravagance. “Extravagance” and “folly” would have been proper words inscribed over the Vanderbilt doorways that night.
In July the new postal order will take the place of the expensive and inconvenient money order, while in September we will be allowed to send a letter for two cents which now costs us three.