William Murdock
William Murdock Born in Bellow Mill, near Old Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotland, August 21, 1754. Died at Sycamore Hill, November 15, 1839. When he was twenty-three years of age he entered the employment of the famous engineering firm of Boulton & Watt, at Soho, and there remained throughout his active life. Watt recognized in him a valuable assistant, and his services were jealously regarded. On his part he devoted himself unreservedly to the interests of his employers.
William H. Vanderbilt
Author of the Famous Speech, “The Public be Damned.”
Waiting for the Saint-Cloud Coach
Waiting for the Saint-Cloud Coach Place de la Concorde 1806
View of the two panoramas and of the passage between them
View of the two panoramas and of the passage between them 1810
Victims of the Tiger
Victims of the Tiger The facilities for running such money traps are so limited and the risk of arrest and punishment so great that the chances of encountering against a “brace” game are about 100 to 1 against the patron; the only consideration with the “slick” gentry who manipulate the games being how to most expeditiously relieve the wayfarer of his wealth at the least possible risk to themselves.
Types at Engel’s
Over on the North Side, on the west side of Clark street, a few doors north of Division street, there is an establishment which in some respects is unique. It is reached either by the North side cable cars or by hansom cab, the fare for the latter being fifty cents for each person. This resort is known as Engel’s, and for several seasons past it has been the favorite with the blooded youth of the North side as well as of a large clientele of chance visitors. It was formerly kept by a man named Matthai and adjoining it was a smaller resort kept by a Monsieur Andre. Andre is now dead and his place closed. On the site of Mr. Matthai’s triumphs Mr. Engel now lives and flourishes.
Two Unique Play Houses
The Madison Street Opera House and the Park Theater, which were briefly mentioned in the preceding chapter, are two resorts that may be regarded as occupying a unique position in the amusement roster. The Madison Street Opera House gives two performances daily and its manager, the veteran Colonel Sam T. Jack, is reputed to be coining money. The size of the audiences that fill Col. Jack’s theater twice a day is attributable, possibly, to the fact that the house is devoted entirely to the presentation of burlesque.
Thomas Blanchard
Thomas Blanchard Born in Sutton, Mass., June 24, 1788. Died, April 16, 1864. Blanchard was a prolific inventor, having taken out no less than thirty or forty patents for as many different inventions. He did not reap great benefit from his labors, for many of his inventions scarcely paid the cost of getting them up, while others were appropriated without payment to him, or even giving him credit.
Théophile Gautier
Gautier was not pure dreamer. Though the world of his art was as far from the world of Paris, as the world of Mr. Yeats from the world of London or Dublin, he was not a seer, or a poet between whom and reality hung a veil of dreams. He was a solid man, one of whose proudest memories was a blow that registered five hundred and thirty-two pounds on an automatic instrument, the result of daily washing down five pounds of gory mutton with three bottles of red Bordeaux.
The Wooden Gallery in the Palais-Royal
The Wooden Gallery in the Palais-Royal 1803
The Waiter
These dining-rooms are small apartments, neatly partitioned off and graded in sizes to suit parties of from two to twenty. That these are liberally patronized may be inferred from the merry bursts of laughter that are occasionally heard pealing through the carpeted halls as the busy waiters go scurrying to and fro with their piles of well filled dishes. It has been said that it is from the sale of wines that the proprietors are enabled to maintain these private-dining-rooms, consequently it is the proper caper to wash down the very reasonably priced dinner with a bottle or so of one’s favorite style of grape juice if the person can afford it, and if you can’t, why, you have no business there.
The Tuleries in 1802
The Tuleries in 1802
The Tiger’s Implements
The Tiger and its Haunts—Gambling Games Great and Small wherein the Process of Parting the Fool and his Money is Carried on with Facility and Dispatch
The Study at Down
The Picture Exhibition at the 'Salon'
The Picture Exhibition at the 'Salon'
The Perron of the Palais-Royal
The Perron of the Palais-Royal
The Lincoln Monument, Springfield, Illinois
The Lincoln Monument, Springfield, Illinois
The Hell-roaring forty-niners
The Hell-roaring forty-niners
The Haymarket Monument
THE statue which stands in the Haymarket, the broad square on Randolph Street extending from Desplaines to Halsted, commemorates an event only second in importance in Chicago’s history to the great fire of 1871. It stands as a mark of that awful night, May 4, 1886, when the mouthings of the anarchists culminated in the hurling of a bomb—the only bomb ever thrown in America—into a squad of police, of whom seven were killed and sixty-six laid low with awful wounds.
The Guileless Hackman
..most Chicago hackmen are imbued with a praiseworthy desire to earn all they can, and are none too conscientious in their ambitions to acquire riches rapidly, there is a very easy manner in which to avoid disputes, namely: make your bargain with your Jehu before you enter his vehicle.
The Fair Shopper
A party of visitors in which there are one or more ladies will unquestionably go on a shopping excursion of greater or less extent, according to the tastes of the fair ones and the length of the purses possessed by their escorts.
The Delights of the Malmaison
The Delights of the Malmaison A saunter through the park in 1804
The Compiler at Work
The Author, while sufficiently modest to keep his identity a secret, makes bold to assert that no person who scans the pages of this book will be able, after he has done so, to lay claim to ignorance of the means whereby to procure entertainment or solace for such hours of idleness as he may find on his hands during his stay in this city.
The Circus Sprite
Speaking of the peanut and lemonade men reminds one that the two great circuses, Barnum & Bailey’s and Forepaugh’s, exhibit in Chicago every summer. They generally appear for two weeks each, and of course parade in due form, according to custom, through the streets of the city on the opening day.
The Boulevard 'Des Petits Spectacles'
The Boulevard 'Des Petits Spectacles' 1808
The Beagle Laid Ashore for Repairs at River Santa Cruz, Patagonia
The Auditorium Tower
Detailed mention of the magnificent opera house in the Auditorium building has been reserved until now in order that it might take its proper place in the description of the mighty edifice which is the wonder and admiration of the United States, and a topic of comment to some extent in Europe. The project of the Auditorium, three sides of which face Wabash Avenue, Congress Street and Michigan Avenue, is said to have emanated from the brain of Mr. Ferd W. Peck, a capitalist, who, in a speech to the Commercial Club, outlined the advantages that would be likely to accrue to the city from the possession of such a building. As the Auditorium is one of the sights of the city, it deserves a special description.
The Adventuress
The term adventuress is applied to women of careless reputation who, being much too smart to endure the ignominious career of professional demi-mondaines, resort to various shrewd schemes to fleece the unwary. Some of their class work in concert with male partners and in such cases the selected victim generally becomes an easy prey. The confidence man may be dangerous; the confidence woman, if she be well educated and bright, as well as pretty, is irresistible except with the most hardened and unsusceptible customers.
Sir Walter Scott
Scott was a part of this revivified world, and his importance in it is not that of its inventor, but of the man who brought so many of its qualities into the art of story-telling that his novels became a secondary inspiration, and moved men as different as Hugo, Balzac, and Dumas, to express themselves in narrative.
Satellites of the Tiger
Satellites of the Tiger
Richard Trevithick
Richard Trevithick Born in Illogan, in the west of Cornwall, England, April 13, 1771. Died in Dartford, Kent, April 22, 1833. In 1780 he built a double-acting high-pressure engine with a crank, for Cook’s Kitchen mine. This was known as the Puffer, from the noise that it made, and it soon came into general use in Cornwall and South Wales, a successful rival of the low-pressure steam vacuum engine of Watt.
Professor Swing in the Pulpit
Prof. Swing is one of the leading personalities of the religious life of the city. He is a man of exceedingly plain exterior but his sermons are sound and forcible. It would be difficult to analyze his creed or that of the people who go to hear him.
Preparing for conquest
Plan of typical New Haven sharpie showing design and construction characteristics
Plan of North Carolina sharpie schooner taken from remains of boat
Plan of North Carolina sharpie of the 1880's
Plan of North Carolina sharpie of the 1880's
Plan of a large Chesapeake Bay sharpie taken from remains of boat
Plan of a Chesapeake Bay terrapin smack
Out for a ride
On the Water
On the water
On the Caroussel
The carousel is a form of entertainment which has grown popular with a certain class of people within recent years. The term may be a little obscure to the uninitiated, but they will readily understand its meaning when it is explained that the carrousel is nothing more or less than the old-fashioned “merry-go-round” which we all easily remember as a feature of fairs, circuses and other out-door entertainments.
Oliver Evans
Oliver Evans Born in 1755 or 1756, in Newport, Del. Died in Philadelphia, April 21, 1819. Little has been preserved respecting the early history of Oliver Evans, who has been aptly styled “The Watt of America.” His parents were farming people, and he had only an ordinary common-school education. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a wheelwright or wagonmaker, and continued his meager education by studying at night time by the light that he made by burning chips and shavings in the fireplace.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hawthorne is one of the earliest story-tellers whom we remember as much for himself as for his books. He is loved or hated, as an essayist is loved or hated, without reference to the subjects on which he happened to write. He wrote in a community for whom a writer was still so novel as to possess some rags of the old splendours of the sage; an author was something wonderful, and no mere business man.
Nathan Read
Born in Warren, Mass., July 2, 1759. Died near Belfast, Me., January 20, 1849. Graduated from Harvard College in 1781, Read was a tutor at Harvard for four years. In 1788 he began experimenting to discover some way of utilizing the steam engine for propelling boats and carriages.
Men of the Middle and Higher Classes
The dress of the men of the middle and higher classes consists of the following articles. First, a pair of full drawers of linen or cotton, tied round the body by a running string or band, the ends of which are embroidered with coloured silks, though concealed by the outer dress. The drawers descend a little below the knees, or to the ankles; but many of the Arabs will not wear long drawers, because prohibited by the Prophet. Next is worn a shirt, with very full sleeves, reaching to the wrist; it is made of linen, of a loose, open texture, or of cotton stuff, or of muslin or silk, or of a mixture of silk and cotton, in stripes, but all white. Over this, in winter, or in cool weather, most persons wear a “sudeyree,” which is a short vest of cloth, or of striped coloured silk and cotton, without sleeves. Over the shirt and sudeyree, or the former alone, is worn a long vest of striped silk and cotton (called “kaftán,” or more commonly “kuftán”), descending to the ankles, with long sleeves extending a few inches beyond the fingers’ ends, but divided from a point a little above the wrist, or about the middle of the fore-arm; so that the hand is generally exposed, though it may be concealed by the sleeve when necessary, for it is customary to cover the hands in the presence of a person of high rank. Round this vest is wound the girdle, which is a coloured shawl, or a long piece of white figured muslin. The ordinary outer robe is a long cloth coat, of any colour (called by the Turks “jubbeh,” but by the Egyptians “gibbeh”), the sleeves of which reach not quite to the wrist.Some persons also wear a “beneesh,” or “benish,” which is a robe of cloth, with long sleeves, like those of the kuftán, but more ample
Little Patriots
Lincoln visiting the Army
Lincoln visiting the Army
John Harvey Kellogg
John Harvey Kellogg
Jane Austen
Twenty years after Evelina, the novel of femininity took a further step in technique and breadth of design. Miss Austen, who in the last decade of the eighteenth century was writing the novels that were not to be published till after the first decade of the nineteenth, learnt from both her precursors. She was a proper follower of Richardson, but dispensed altogether with the artifice of letters, although the whole of her work is so intimate and particular in expression that it would almost seem to be written in a letter to the reader.
In the Gallery of the Palais-Royal
House where the President died
House where the President died
Henry C. Frick
Manager Carnegie Works, Homestead, Pennsylvania.
Harvey’s 'Wayside Inn"
The Auditorium, Richelieu, and Leland Cafes, together with29 Devine’s wine-room on the other side of Jackson Street, and Colonel John Harvey’s “Wayside Inn” in the alley, form a sort of circuit or beat, which these “rapid” young men (i.e. the “bloods”) travel at all times, including such hours as the sale of cheering beverages is forbidden by city ordinance. Of these, Harvey’s is perhaps the most unique resort, though if one cannot find his friends in one of the places named after midnight he is tolerably certain to encounter them in one of the others.
Guy De Maupassant
De Maupassant for seven years submitted all he wrote to Flaubert's criticism. If we add to the preceding essay some sentences from Flaubert's correspondence, it will be easy to imagine the lines that criticism must have taken, and interesting to compare them with the resulting craftsman.
Grover Cleveland
Elected by the “Common People,” November 8, 1892, to Represent the Interests of the Masses against the Classes.
François René De Chateaubriand
It was through caring for his setting in this way that Chateaubriand came as if by accident to the discovery of local colour. He wanted his savages to love in the wilderness, and happening to have seen a wilderness, reproduced it, and made his savages not merely savages but Muskogees, fashioned their talk to fit their race, and made it quite clear that this tale, at any rate, could not be imagined as passing on the Mountains of the Moon.
Ford’s Theatre, where President Lincoln was assassinated
Ford’s Theatre, where President Lincoln was assassinated
Fellaheen
The lower orders in Egypt, with the exception of a very small proportion, chiefly residing in the large towns, consist of Felláheen (or Agriculturists). Most of those in the great towns, and a few in the smaller towns and some of the villages, are petty tradesmen or artificers, or obtain their livelihood as servants, or by various labours. In all cases, their earnings are very small; barely sufficient, in general, and sometimes insufficient, to supply them and their families with the cheapest necessaries of life.
Fellah Women
Fellah Women The dress of a large proportion of those women of the lower orders who are not of the poorest class consists of a pair of trousers or drawers (similar in form to the shintiyán of the ladies, but generally of plain white cotton or linen), a blue linen or cotton shirt (not quite so full as that of the men), a burko’ of a kind of coarse black crape, and a dark blue tarhah of muslin or linen. Some wear over the shirt, or instead of the latter, a linen tób, of the same form as that of the ladies. The sleeves of this are often turned up over the head; either to prevent their being incommodious, or to supply the place of a tarhah.
Fanny Burney
Fanny Burney took more material with a lighter hand, stealing away the business of The Tatler, The Spectator, The Citizen of the World, and trying not only to 'draw characters from nature' but also to 'mark the manners of the time.'