punished with transportation for life. From Ruth, when the kinsman of Boaz gave up his this time until the passage of the Emancipa- claim to the inheritance of Ruth, and to Ruth tion bill the subject was continually pressed also, he indicated his assent by plucking off upon the attention of Parliament. Slavery his shoe and giving it to Boaz. Also, we read existed in Great Britain in Saxon and Norman in Deuteronomy that when the brother of a times, when the peasantry were sold in the dead man refused to marry his widow she asmarket like cattle for exportation, and were serted her independence of him by “loosing looked upon as mere chattels, to be bought and his shoe." sold with the land upon which they toiled. In Scotland, even as late as 1780, a law existed which compelled colliers, on entering a mine, to perpetual service there, the right to their labor passing with the mine to an inheritor or purchaser, and their children being in like manner attached to the mine, and forbidden under severe penalty to seek other employment. Trojan War. The legend regarding the Trojan war has, undoubtedly, a historical origin, in the fact of the actual destruction of Troy by a Grecian military expedition. About 1194-'84 B. C., according to the traditions, Paris, one of the sons of Priam, enticed Helen, the beautiful wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta, away from her husband, and, at the call of Menelaus all the heroes of Greece flew to arms to avenge this wrong. The Grecian host numbered 100,000 warriors, among whom were Ulysses, Achilles, Ajax, Diomed, and Agamemnon, who, as brother of Menelaus, was chosen to lead the expedition. The siege of the city of Priam lasted ten years. Finally the Greeks, by the device of Ulysses, built an immense wooden horse, in which they concealed a number of their warriors, and left it on the plain in sight of the city, and then retired to their ships as though abandoning the siege. The Trojans, believing that the statue was left as a propitiatory offering to their gods, carried it within their walls, and at night the concealed warriors issued from the horse and opened the gates of the city to their returned comrades, and Troy was sacked and burned. The king and all his sons were killed; in fact, according to the legend, Æneas, and his father, Anchises, and a few devoted followers, were the only ones to escape, and these, after long wanderings by sea and land, finally settled on the shores of Etruria, in Italy. The battles which were fought before the walls of Troy have been immortalized by Homer in the "Iliad." Captain Kidd was born in Scotland, and took to the sea when a mere boy. In 1695 a company composed of leading gentlemen in Great Britain and in the Colonies was formed to make a business of privateering and reap the profits, which were known to be immense. The "Adventure," a galley of 287 tons, quite a large vessel for those days, was purchased, and the command given to Kidd, who sailed with two commissions, one of which empowered him to act against the French, and the other to cruise against pirates. Besides these commissions under the Great Seal, he had the ordinary letters of marque from the Commissioners of the Admiralty. The king was to have one tenth of all the booty, and the rest was to be divided between the shareholders and Kidd in certain specified proportions. A portion was to be appropriated to the crew, who were to receive no regular pay. Kidd left Plymouth April 23, 1696, captured a French fishing vessel off Newfoundland, and in July reached New York, where he remained until September, when he sailed for Madagascar, then one of the strongholds of the buccaneers. In January of the following year he arrived at the island, and in 1698 reports were abroad in England that he had raised the black flag, and orders were dispatched to the effect that he be apprehended should he come within reach. April, 1699, found him in the West Indies, whither he had gone in a vessel called the “Quidah Merchant." This he secured in a lagoon in the island of Saona, near Hayti, and re-embarked in a small sloop named the San Antonio," for the Colonies of America. He sailed up Long Island Sound to Oyster Bay, after making a landing in Delaware Bay, and there took aboard a New York lawyer named James Emott, whom he afterward sent to Boston to the Earl of Bellamont, who had become governor of the Colonies. Emott was Bride, Throwing Shoe after. The Kidd's advance agent, sent forward to ascercustom of throwing a shoe after a departing tain how the privateersman would be received. bride and groom originated so far back in the While the lawyer was absent on this mission, dim and mystical past that the memory of man Kidd buried some bales of goods and treasure stretcheth not back to its beginning. It is by on Gardiner's Island. To the inquiries of the some thought to typify an assault, and is a New York lawyer Bellamont made evasive lingering trace of the custom among savage answers, and then later induced Kidd to pronations of carrying away the bride by violence. ceed to Boston, where he landed July 1, 1699. Others claim that it has a likeness to a Jewish Five days later, Kidd, who was examined by custom mentioned in the Bible. Thus, in the Council, was sent to England, where he was given something of the form of a trial. He was permitted to have no counsel, was not allowed to send for papers or witnesses, and was, of course, found guilty of piracy and of the murder of one of his crew, and was hanged at Execution Dock, with nine of his associates. Bellamont fitted out another vessel to go in search of the "Quidah Merchant, ," but news came before the search began that the latter had been stripped and burned by the men left with it by Kidd. The treasure which was secured on Gardiner's Island, with what was found with Kidd on the San Antonio," amounted to $70,000. Bridge of Sighs is the bridge connecting the palace of the Doge with the state prison in Venice. It was so called because prisoners once having crossed it from the Judgment Hall were never seen again, and it was supposed that many of them were dropped through a trap-door into the dark and deep waters of the canal flowing beneath. the thirteen original States. The society is nominally a charitable and social organization, and is distinct from the general committee of the Tammany Democracy, which is a political organization. Salutation, Forms of. The custom of shaking hands, which is the most common among civilized nations, comes undoubtedly from remote barbarism, when two men, meeting, gave each other their weapon hands as a security against treachery or sudden attack. In the East and among the Slavic nations the character of salutations is quite different. Among the Persians, the custom of throwing one's self upon the ground and kissing the feet of the monarch prevails. In China, an inferior upon horseback meeting a superior dismounts and waits until the latter has passed. In Japan the inferior removes his sandals when meeting his superior, crosses his hands by placing the right hand in the left sleeve, and, with a slow, rocking motion of his body, cries out, " Augh! Augh!" (Do not hurt me.) In Siam, the inferior throws himself upon the ground before his superior; the latter sends forward one of his slaves to see whether the former has been eating anything, or carries with him any smell at all offensive. If he does, he is immediately kicked out without ceremony; but if not, the attendant raises him Scarabæus, a peculiar beetle held sacred by the Egyptians. Several mystical ideas were attributed to it; the number of its toes, 30, symbolized the days of the month; the time it deposited its ball, which contained its eggs, was supposed to refer to the lunar month; the movement of the clay-ball referred to the action of the sun on the earth, and personified that luminary. It was supposed to be only of up. In Ceylon, the inferior, on meeting a the male sex, hence it signified the self-existent, self-begotten generation, or metamorphosis, and the male or paternal principle of nature. In this sense it appears on the head of the Pygmæan deity Ptah-Socharis Osiris, the Demiurgos, and in astronomical scenes and sepulchral formulas. In connection with the Egyptian notions, the Gnostics and some of the Fathers called Christ the scarabæus. The insect during its life was worshiped and after death embalmed. superior, throws himself upon the ground, repeating the name and dignity of the latter. Among some tribes of the American Indians the custom is to salute by rubbing noses together. This form is also common in the Friendly and Society Islands, where it is returned by each taking the hand of the other and rubbing it upon his own nose and mouth. The Moors of Morocco ride at full speed toward a stranger, as if they intended to run him down, and, on arriving near, suddenly stop Tammany, Society of, or Columbian and fire a pistol over his head. The Arabians Order, was formed in 1789, being the effect of shake hands six or eight times; but if persons a popular movement in New York, having pri- of distinction they embrace and kiss several marily in view a counterweight to the so-called times, also kissing their own hands. In Tur"aristocratic" Society of the Cincinnati. It key, it is the custom to place the hand upon was essentially anti-Federalist or Democratic the breast and bow to the person saluted. In in its character, and its chief founder was Wil- Burmah, when a gentleman meets a lady or liam Mooney, an upholsterer, and a native-born another gentleman he applies his mouth and American of Irish extraction. It took its title nose closely to their cheek and draws in a long from a noted, ancient, wise, and friendly chief breath, as if smelling a delightful perfume of the Delaware tribe of Indians, named Tam- with both mouth and nose. many, who had, for the want of a better subject, portion of Germany it is an act of politeness been canonized by the soldiers of the Revolu- to kiss the hand of a lady; but this privilege is tion as the American patron saint. The first allowed in Italy only to near relatives, while meeting was held May 12, 1789. The act of in Russia it is extended to kissing the foreincorporation was passed in 1805. The Grand head. On the European continent, it is usual Sachem and thirteen Sachems were designed for men who are intimate friends to kiss one to typify the President and the Governors of another. In the greater The Pelew Island inhabitants grasp either the hand or foot of the one they wish to salute and rub their faces against it; while Yemen persons of rank permit their fingers to be kissed, after long refusal. Nihilism. The term "Nihilist" was probably first used by the Russian novelist Turgeneff, and was given to the party now known as Nihilists in derision, because its members sought the destruction of all existing order and government without proposing and apparently without intending to substitute any defined scheme or organization in its place. The earliest advocate of this doctrine was Michael Bakunin, who, as early as 1847, advocated a Russian republic, and in 1868 founded the "International Alliance of Revolution," a secret society having for its object a popular uprising against all monarchical governments. This society was undoubtedly the parent of the many secret organizations that have since sprung into existence throughout Europe. Though Alexander II. introduced a much more liberal policy than any of his predecessors, it came so far short of the desires of the party of progress that the spirit of discontent seemed stimulated, and the existence of a revolutionary conspiracy was proved in 1877, when, after a great trial lasting eighteen months, 135 persons out of 183 arrested were found to belong to such an organization. In 1878, when Vera Sassulitch shot General Trepoff, chief of the secret police, the Nihilists began to attract attention as a really formidable society. Her ac quittal was followed by a series of outbreaks and assassinations which were only checked after the Czar himself had fallen at the hands of a Nihilist assassin. The doctrines and objects of the Nihilists must be taken from the declarations of their leaders. Bakunin, in a speech at Geneva in 1868, announced that he was the bearer of a new gospel, whose mission was to destroy the lie at the beginning of which was God. Having got rid of this belief, the next lie to be destroyed was right, a fiction invented by might to strengthen her power. "Our first work," he said, "must be destruction of everything as it now exists, the good and the bad; for, if but an atom of this old world remains, the new will never be created." Bacteria is the name given to certain forms found in animal and vegetable fluids because of their shape, and is derived from a Greek word meaning a club. They are mere points of organized matter, and constitute the lowest form of organic life. They are found in the sap of plants, in the blood of man and of the lower animals, and are abundant in eggs. They bear an important part in healthy as well as morbid processes, in the ripening of fruit as well as decay. They also exist in suspension in the air, and the festering of an open sore is occasioned by the entrance of bacteria from the surrounding air. They also act as powerful organic ferments in the transformation of starch into sugar, of sugar-cane into glucose, etc. |