debate in municipal government. The chorus is as essential to Walker's jazzy administration as it was to the drama of the ancient Greeks.

Walker has the Irish-given gifts of a quick thinking apparatus and a glib tongue. While others are addressing the chair, you can almost see him formulating a well-chosen "snappy comeback". Whether he favors a motion or not, it will do no harm to kid it a little. The public must have its laugh. A word from the Mayor will get it. He picks his cues with an actor's intuitive sense of the right moment. Instinctively "the public" sets itself for the sparkling word. There is a holding of breath in the rear seats, an instant of suspense, a hush of expectancy for what the Mayor is about to say. You experience nothing like it outside of the theatre.

Let no one infer that the Mayor of New York maintains a claque or that Tammany is packing the hall with a troupe of trained laughers. The Mayor's contribution to the joy of living is given spontaneously enough and the laughter which it evokes bears all the earmarks of the real article. Nevertheless there is just a suspicion that the Mayor enjoys the mirthful proceedings somewhat less than he did in the beginning. He is compelled by his reputation to carry on. Such is the power of suggestion that the good citizens in the rear seats have persuaded themselves that every word he utters is pretty sure to be funny. It is a heavy responsibility to place upon any man's shoulders. But Walker has never shirked it.

He rather likes this part of his job, I imagine. His fame as a puller of "nifties", a fashioner of snappy lines, has spread far. Whether or not it has been well and fairly earned may be questioned. "Wise-cracking" today is a specialty, a profession. Some men make a living by it. Perhaps, if he had to, Walker could, too. But as a professional he would find himself judged by more exacting standards than those set up by his City Hall "public".

Consider, for instance, an average day's output from the "Jimmie" Walker "wise-cracker" barrel. It is at a regular meeting of the Board of Estimate. The "public", as usual, is present. The following are from notes taken on the spot:

THE MAYOR, apropos of something: Everybody has a business, a profession or a racket. (Laughter). . . I don't write letters and I don't read letters. (Laughter) . . . To a long-winded lobbyist with whom he has been very patient: Now listen, I've yessed you long enough. (Loud laughter) . . . To the same gentleman who remonstrates, “But my dear Mr. Mayor-": Not dear but expensive. (Snorts and chuckles). To the long-winded citizen again: Listen; can't we two boys play after hours? To a viewer with alarm: Just where do you keep this private detective bureau of yours? . . . To a speaker who announces he has almost forgotten what he wanted to say: It don't make any difference here. You don't have to remember anything-just talk right along. (Ha-ha-ha) . . . To a member of the Board: Did you ever appear before the City Planning Committee? Yes? You're a brave man. (Salvos) ... To the public at large: Everybody wants coal but nobody wants coal pockets. (Murmurs of amused approval) . . . To a speaker on the Budget who says he will deal briefly with the police: You'd better or we may have to call in a couple of them. (Unrestrained laughs) . . . To another who protests he wasn't accusing the Mayor: Well, you've got an awful tricky way of complimenting me.

...

To a pleader who cannot stop talking: Did you ever hear of the eight-hour law? . . . To a veteran lobbyist who has grown slightly deaf in the service: That's the most accommodating ear I ever met . . . (Random shots): He didn't use wool soap either-it shrunk a little . . . That ought to be referred to the aquarium ... Let's get a search warrant (Laughter ad lib.)

...

I am assured that the day on which the foregoing sallies were noted was a typical day and that the Mayor was in his usual good form. From observation I might add that the "public" seemed to be in excellent form. Seldom had the back seat warmers enjoyed so many good hearty laughs As to the quality of the humor there may be varying opinions. As to the cause which it serves, no doubt can exist. "Jimmie" Walker today is more popular with his constituents than at any time since he became Mayor.

His credo-if it may be called that-is, Be Yourself. He stands ready to meet all comers on that basis. He is enormously patient with the dull, slow-going, long-winded, self-important bores who infest his office and consume hours of his time. He only asks that they concede his right to go his own way even as they go theirs. Nor must they take it amiss if all they get for their pains is a Walker "wise-crack" or two. Look at the portraits on the surrounding walls and then at Walker. Plainly styles in Mayors have changed.

His fondness for clothes is as notorious as his tardiness at

meetings. He may arrive late but he is always dressed to the minute. He possesses a boyish, straight-lined figure which is the delight of the tailor. Though he may dress (in some opinions) not wisely but too well, being fond of tight-fitting suits and symphonic color schemes, the Walker apparel proclaims not merely the man but the town he rules. A certain establishment advertises clothes "in the New York manner". That describes the Walker wardrobe. Parisians, when they saw him, called him chic. He unquestionably is the first Mayor of New York who ever could have achieved this distinction. Judging by the portraits of his distinguished predecessors he is also the first Mayor to attain that nice balance between cuff and coatsleeve which is the despair of so many would-be "good dressers".

Perhaps he stepped out of his class, as they say in the ring, when he entered the Mayor's office. It had always been regarded as a job for political heavyweights. He is admittedly no heavyweight, either physically or intellectually. It is a question whether he qualifies even as a light-heavyweight. But as things turn out, that does not matter. Indeed his very deficiency in respect to the "larger aspects" of his job has been converted into an asset. He is glad to turn over large and intricate matters, like the transit problem, to abler and more experienced men. Even in the matter of establishing a coal pocket in Jamaica he will rely upon the advice of others rather than pose as an expert himself. But when it comes to handling delicate situations, such as determining the closing hour for night clubs or welcoming the largest Swiss cheese in the world, no one can turn the trick more neatly and with more reflected credit to the city than the Mayor himself.

Added to other accomplishments, he has a good radio voice and a face which films well-qualities not to be overlooked in presentday office holders. Nature and training endowed him with a larger assortment of the so-called social graces than were given to Tammany Mayors of old. These he has capitalized to his own and his party's advantage. But it is the "wise-crack" that distinguishes him above all else. This is his Excalibur. He relies on it in all crises. It has never failed him and probably never will. For he has the good sense not to laugh at his own jokes.

ULTRAVIOLET IN MODERN LIFE

BY DONALD C. STOCKBARGER

A THING which is growing increasingly popular and yet is not a fad must have some genuine good in it for the public. Ultraviolet radiation, often referred to as a ray or as invisible light, is one of these things. True, some fads are likely to appear among the uses of every good thing when public attention is directed toward it, but the legitimate uses are stable and will remain so for all time. Photographers, criminologists, chemists, physicians, theatrical producers, archæologists, physicists, dentists, biologists, botanists and a host of others are employing this interesting radiation in their trades and professions. The layman, after reading of the wonders of this invisible agent, is likely to arrive at the conclusion that it is both new and mysterious. It is neither.

The discovery of ultraviolet has been attributed to Ritter, who in 1801 found that certain light-sensitive chemicals were also sensitive to an invisible radiation beyond the violet of the visible spectrum. His experiments had to do with silver salts such as are used in making photographic paper. Nearly all discoveries are traceable to earlier findings, and so here we can turn back through our histories of science to 1666, the year in which Newton discovered the visible spectrum. When he separated the spectral colors of sunlight by passing a beam of the latter through a glass prism, he was close to finding the ultraviolet rays. But Newton's eyes, like our own, could not see them, and, having no reason to suppose that anything of the kind existed, it probably never occurred to him that a search should be made for invisible colors.

Gamma rays, which are emitted by certain radioactive substances, X-rays, ultraviolet, which is not at all the same as violet ray, visible light, infrared or radiant heat, and electrical waves such as are used in the transmission of radio programmes and wireless messages, all belong to the same family. We believe

them to consist of energy transmitted through space in the form of waves. Physicists have for years been unable to agree on how the energy is able to travel, but there are several facts which have been established, viz.: It travels at the tremendous speed of about one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second through space which has been made as devoid of matter as the best of modern vacuum pumps will permit; it has this speed, no matter to which branch of the family it belongs; and it behaves in many ways like sound. It has long been established that sound travels in the form of waves, and it is known that the waves from two tuning forks which vibrate at slightly different rates, i. e., emit sounds of slightly different pitches, produce a beat note which is a sound of much lower pitch. The same thing is responsible for the disagreeable sensation sometimes received when bells which are not properly tuned are played in unison. Light exhibits some of the same properties as sound in the laboratory and, therefore, we are led to the conclusion that it is composed of waves. In passing it may be of interest to mention that the annoying heterodyning sometimes experienced by radio listeners is often due to nothing other than a beat note produced by two broadcasting stations operating on slightly different wave lengths.

Sound and light belong to entirely different families. The one in which we are interested is known as the electromagnetic spectrum. The waves of which it is composed vary in length as we go from one end of the spectrum to the other, from an extremely small fraction of a millimetre to thousands of metres, the order of increasing wave lengths being the same as the order in which the members of the family were given above. Wireless waves might be compared with the largest waves on the ocean, and ultraviolet rays with the tiny ripples along the shore.

White light, instead of being one particular kind of radiant energy, is really a mixture of many kinds, each of which we call a color. Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red are the colors with which we are familiar, but the physicist in his laboratory is able to distinguish a great many more distinctly different hues. On the short wave length side of violet, in the ultraviolet region, the artificial eye of the scientific laboratory is able to