Keogh was in the latest years of his eventful career afflicted with this unpleasant failing of memory. On the occasion of a "Bar dinner" at his house he went upstairs to dress, but did not reappear. The company sat patiently for some time, till at length just as their hunger was getting the better of their manners, and an emissary was being despatched to hunt up the missing Judge-his lordship appeared, and explained with many apologies that, imagining he was retiring for the night, he had undressed and got into bed. After an hour's sleep he awoke, when it suddenly

struck him that he had not yet dined, on which he hurried down to his guests. He once attended a representation of "Macbeth" in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. It will be remembered that the witches, in reply to the Thane's inquiry what they were doing, declared they were doing "A deed without a name." Catching the sound of the words, and no doubt imagining he was on the bench in the Four Courts, Keogh exclaimed, to the astonishment of the audience, "A deed without a name! Why, it's not worth sixpence!" -Cornhill Magazine.

ALFRED NOBEL, the inventor of dynamite, died on the 10th of December, 1896, at San Remo, and by his will his large fortune is to be devoted to the encouragement of scientific research, and the promotion of peace among nations. Having had the advantage of personal acquaintance with him for a number of years, I have undertaken to write this biographical sketch, for which his eldest nephew, Mr. Emmanuel Nobel of St. Petersburg, as well as several of his friends, have kindly supplied me with material. The strong The strong individuality of the man, his restless energy and fertility of invention, have contributed to place him in an almost unique position among the inventors. of recent times, the history of the development of modern explosives being practically the history of his life.

Alfred Nobel was born at Stockholm on the 21st of October, 1833. His great-grandfather, Olof Nobilius, was a teacher of drawing at the University of Upsala. His grandfather, Immanuel, who dropped the latinized form of the name and called himself Nobel, was an army surgeon during the Finnish war under Gustavus the Third, and afterward city physician at Gefle. His father, Emmanuel Nobel, was born in 1801 at this latter place. After spending some time at sea in order to study the construction and manage

ment of ships, he returned to Sweden, and was employed in a shipyard at Stockholm. Later on he accepted an appointment from Mehemet Ali, in whose service he remained four years in Egypt. In 1828 he returned to Stockholm, married a Swedish lady, Karolina Henrietta Ahlsell, and became assistant to the well-known naval constructor, Colonel Blom. In 1829 his eldest son Robert was born; in 1831, Ludwig Emmanuel; and in 1833, Alfred Bernard, the subject of this sketch. The youngest son, Oscar Emil, was born in 1843.

Emmanuel Nobel was also an inventor of considerable merit. He made several surgical appliances of india-rubber, a material which was quite a novelty at that time, and devised india-rubber cushions for carriages to lessen vibration. Many years later, his son Alfred suggested the manufacture of an artificial substitute for india-rubber. Throughout we shall find that the father not only gave the son example and encouragement as an inventor, but also that training which led him in the direction in which he was destined to attain celebrity. In 1837 an accident occurred which had a great influence on Alfred's future. When his father was experimenting with some new compound, an explosion took place, shattering the windows in

the neighborhood and frightening the inhabitants to such an extent that he was compelled to leave Stockholm. He decided to accept a proposal made him by the Finnish statesman, Baron Hartman, and went to St. Petersburg, where shortly after his arrival he commenced to demonstrate the use of gunpowder for land and submarine mines, and the effect of a torpedo he had devised. His experiments, especially those carried out in 1842, were so successful that the Russian Government offered him 25,000 roubles in gold, on the condition that he should remain in Russia and manufacture mines and torpedoes for the Russian Government alone. He accepted this offer, erected. small engineering works on the Neva, and brought his wife and his son Alfred from Stockholm to St. Petersburg. The eldest son, Robert, had gone to sea as a naval engineer, and Ludwig was in Russia already, having come over some time previously to assist his father.

Alfred Nobel thus came to Russia when he was nine years old. He had been attending the St. Jacob's Church School in Stockholm, from the 2d of September, 1841, until the 18th of October, 1842. In St. Petersburg he was sent to school for some time, but was very soon compelled to interrupt his studies on account of his delicate health, a weakness of the spine obliging him to lie on a couch the greater part of the day, and during this period his mother seems to have been his chief teacher. Life at home was not always one of ease; his father's business was sometimes prosperous, sometimes depressed, and consequently Alfred at an early age was set to work as an apprentice in the engineering works of his father, in whose inventions he from the first took a lively interest. The discovery of gun-cotton by Schoenbein in 1845 had attracted considerable attention all over Europe, and had not escaped the notice of Emmanuel Nobel; he tried gun-cotton for his land and submarine mines, and also for his torpedo.

His pet idea at the time seems, however, to have been that steam could be superseded by heated air. He thought that it would be well to have one of

his sons thoroughly trained to carry out this idea, and as Ludwig had become almost indispensable at the engineering works, and Robert was still abroad, he decided in 1850 to send Alfred, who was then sixteen years of age, to the United States to study under the well-known Swedish engineer, John Ericsson. Alfred Nobel was in America from his seventeenth to his twentyfirst year, and then returned to St. Petersburg.

Let us pause for a moment to consider this young man of twenty-one, who spoke Swedish, Russian, English, German, and French, who was not only trained as an engineer, but had lived in the atmosphere of invention and mechanical contrivances--a young man who was able to read the books and publications of nearly every civilized nation, and who took a vivid interest in all around him. His bent in those days was toward mechanical engineering, and it was only at a later date that he took up chemistry and showed a marked preference for that science.

At the outbreak of the Crimean War, Emmanuel Nobel was commissioned by the Russian Government to defend Kronstadt with submarine mines, and also to make torpedoes. His son, Robert, who was then in St. Petersburg, undertook to lay these mines, and a line of them was also placed at Wiborg. Contrary to distinct instructions a Russian captain tried to pass that line, with the result that his vessel was blown up. This revealed the existence of mines to the British fleet; a mine was fished up and hauled on board the flagship Duke of Wellington, where it was examined; it exploded on the deck and killed a seaman. It is to Emmanuel Nobel's invention that the Russians ascribe the fact that the British fleet did not try to force its " the Russian fortress at the Neva. His torpedo a success, the chemic for firing them be the war, busin works becam factory ow ernment of uel Nobel f and his wo

cror en for nth century g were scarcely took 150 years

creditors. Shortly after this, in 1859, he left for Sweden with his wife and two younger sons, Alfred and Oscar; while Ludwig remained in charge of the factory at St. Petersburg, which he conducted with so much skill that he succeeded in paying off all his father's creditors and ultimately developed the business into one of great magnitude. Both at St. Petersburg and Stockholm the father and his son Alfred were constantly engaged in pursuing some invention. Their attention had been directed to the discovery of nitroglycerine by Sobrero in 1847. They made some of this new explosive and experimented with it. In September, 1857, two years before he left St. Petersburg, Alfred Nobel took out his first patent, which was for a gasometer, and in 1859, shortly after his return to Stockholm, he patented an apparatus for measuring liquids, and also an improved barometer. From 1859 to 1862, father and son continued working on explosives, more particularly nitro-glycerine, of which they improved the method of production, although at the same time they had to work in other directions in order to provide for the wants of their very modest home. In 1861, Alfred undertook a journey to different places on the Continent in order to obtain the necessary capital to start a factory. It was in Paris that he was most successful in awakening an interest in the new explosive, and with the money he brought home small works were erected at Helenborg, near Stockholm. Here, in 1862, nitro-glycerine was manufactured for the first time on a commercial scale. In the erection of this small factory at Helenborg, a young engineer, Alarik Liedbeck, had been employed; he was Alfred's schoolfellow and best friend, and they remained in the closest intimacy throughout life, Alarik Liedbeck assisting in planning and building most of the factories which Nobel erected later on.

Convinced of the importance of nitro-glycerine as a more powerful nt than gunpowder, they must have and alselves on the eve of assured His father, but this was not to be. in 1801 at at disaster befell the spending some ory blew up; a chemstudy the constr

ist, Mr. Carl Erik Hertzman, was killed, and, worse still, Alfred's youngest brother Oscar lost his life. This calamity so affected Emmanuel Nobel that a few months after the event he had a paralytic stroke, which left him permanently crippled, although his mind remained unaffected; he lived a few years in this state and died at Helenborg in 1872. Alfred pursued his ideas with undaunted energy. The manufacture of the fearful explosive being no longer tolerated near the town, he carried on his work on board a hired barge, anchored in Lake Mälaren; but, meanwhile, the explosive had attracted attention, a number of mines began to use it, and the Government decided to utilize nitro-glycerine in the construction of a large railway tunnel under the suburbs of Stockholm. Capitalists now began to take an interest in what was then known as Nobel's blasting oil; the Swedish Nitro-glycerine Company was formed, and works on a large scale were established at Winterviken, near Stockholm, in 1865. In the same year, the factory at Krümmel, on the Elbe, near Hamburg, now the largest explosive works on the Continent, was called into existence. Shortly after the explosion, when he had no other factory but the primitive arrangement on board the hired hulk, Alfred had gone over to Hamburg to try and introduce nitroglycerine into Germany. A Swedish merchant, whom he had known in Stockholm and who was then living in Hamburg, introduced him to several gentlemen, and a lawyer, Dr. Bandmann, received his suggestions so enthusiastically that he became his partner and placed his available fortune at the disposal of the young engineer. They purchased a disused tannery, and there built the above-mentioned works at Krümmel.

Surely this was a remarkable young man. Physically weak, of a nervous, highly strung and exceptionally sensitive disposition, he was endowed with a strong will, unbounded energy, and wonderful perseverance; he feared no danger, and never yielded to adversity. Many would have succumbed under similar circumstances, but the succession of almost unsurmountable diffi

culties, the explosion of his factory, causing a general scare and dread of the deadly compound he was making, the loss of his youngest brother, to whom he was devotedly attached, the consequent paralysis of his old father, and his mother's grief and anxiety, could not deter him from pursuing his aim. His temerity frequently verged on foolhardiness, as when he was going to his father's works one day at St. Petersburg, and finding no boat to take him across the river, he swam to the opposite bank of the Neva. His brother upbraided him severely for needlessly exposing himself to danger, and his acquaintances ridiculed him, and he took this so much to heart that he disappeared for some time, during which he is said to have undertaken a journey into the interior of Russia. The co-existence of impulsive daring and sensitive timidity was a striking feature in his character. He frequent ly demonstrated the value and safety of his explosives with his own hands, although he was particularly susceptible to headaches caused by bringing nitroglycerine into contact with the skin; they affected him so violently that he was often obliged to lie down on the ground in the mine or quarry in which he was experimenting. On one occasion, when some dynamite could not be removed from a large cask, he crept into it and dug the explosive out with a knife. Numerous other incidents could be related of the fearlessness he displayed when the success of his invention depended entirely upon his demonstrations of its safety, which in those days had not yet been thoroughly proved.

The Swedish company gradually made headway in Sweden and Norway, where a factory had been built near Christiania in 1866, and the firm of A. Nobel & Co., of Hamburg, sold nitroglycerine to mines in Germany and other parts of the Continent; but the explosive was not a complete success. Nitro-glycerine, which is made by treating glycerine with a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acids, and which closely resembles salad oil in appearance, is poisonous, very sensitive to shock or blow, and very dangerous to handle. Being a liquid, it runs into

the fissures of the rock when poured into the bore-hole, and requires to be carefully confined that it may explode when ignited by means of a simple fuse. Nobel tried to overcome these difficulties, first by mixing it with gunpowder, and then by adding fluids which rendered it non-explosive, so that it could be safely transported, the added liquid being removed after arrival; he also suggested confining it in a tube having the shape of the bore-hole, and firing it by means of a small gunpowder cartridge or primer. But all this did not avail, and accidents occurred so frequently that the use of the blasting oil was prohibited in Belgium, in Sweden, and later on in England. A vessel carrying some cases shipped from Hamburg and destined for Chili was blown up, and the event caused such a sensation that it seemed as if all Governments would prohibit the use of nitro-glycerine. In the meantime, however, Nobel had solved the problem of its safe use, and at the end of 1866 he had invented a compound, which he called dynamite, made by mixing the nitro-glycerine oil with porous absorbing material, thus converting it into a paste. Dynamite proved on experiment to be comparatively insensitive to shock or blow; it burned when ignited, and could only be properly exploded by means of a powerful detonator fixed to the end of the fuse and inserted into the plastic explosive.

The invention of dynamite marks an epoch in the history of civilization. In judging of the degree of culture of a people, we are guided to a great extent by the roads and waterways they constructed, and still more by the facility with which they obtained metals and applied them to the arts. The

Romans constructed excellent roads on the level, but in the mountains they could only make narrow and very steep paths. Canals and cuttings were made with great sacrifice and labor, and only where the soil was soft. Thus Suetonius states that in order to make a cutting about three miles long to drain. the Lacus Fucinus, the Emperor Claudius employed 30,000 men for eleven years. In the sixteenth century road making and mining were scarcely more advanced. It took 150 years

(from 1535 to 1685) to mine five miles. of gallery in the Harz mountains. Although blasting with gunpowder dates back to the seventeenth century, it did not come into general use until the middle of the eighteenth century, at which time the total cubage mined in Great Britain amounted to little more than that of a large railway cutting of the present day. The use of gunpowder gave a great impetus to mining and public works, but it was only the introduction of railways, and the necessity of laying the lines on easy gradients, which raised blasting to a science. The introduction of dynamite, three times as powerful and much more reliable than gunpowder, entirely revolutionized that science and made it possible to execute the gigantic engineering works of our times, and brought about that prodigious development of the mining industry of the world which we have witnessed during the last twenty-five

years.

As soon as dynamite was invented, its manufacture was taken up by the Swedish company and the Hamburg firm, and during 1867 it was selling in small quantities. At the end of that year, Nobel went over to America to introduce his explosive there. He took two cases of dynamite with him. On his arrival in New York, where he had several acquaintances among people he had met at the time when he was working with Ericsson, he put up at a small hotel, but a few days later, the proprietor, having found out the nature of the stranger's luggage, politely asked him to leave his establishment and seek lodgings elsewhere. He was not successful with his invention in New York, and therefore went to San Francisco, where with the assistance of Mr. Bandmann, his partner's brother, who resided there, he succeeded in forming a company, and works were erected in that neighborhood in 1868 for the manufacture of dynamite, or, as the Americans called it, giant powder. his return to Europe, he completed arrangements with a firm in Vienna for the establishment of works in Austria, and the factory of Zamky, near Prague, was built at the end of 1868. In the beginning of 1870, an explosion

On

occurred at the German factory at Krümmel; the manager, a Swede of the name of Ratsman, and his assistant, Mr. Schnell, a German, were killed, and the damage done was very considerable. Before the works could be reconstructed, the Franco-German war broke out. During the war the Germans used both gun-cotton and dynamite, and the astounding effect of these modern explosives was thus brought prominently before the public. As soon as hostilities had ceased, Nobel went to Paris, and there met M. Paul Barbe, with whom he remained in intimate business relations for twenty years. Gambetta was so impressed with the necessity of dynamite being made in France that, although the manufacture of explosives is a State monopoly there, a concession was granted for the erection of a dynamite factory, and at the end of 1871 a company was formed, and the factory of Paulilles, near Port Vendres, was built. It was in 1871 that Nobel came to this country, and on the 12th of April in that year he signed an agreement for the transfer of his patent rights for Great Britain and the British colonies to the British Dynamite Company, Limited, of Glasgow, which was afterward reconstructed under the name of Nobel's Explosives Company, Limited. He selected a site on the west coast of Scotland, near Ardrossan, and there laid the foundation of the Ardeer factory, which is now the largest in the world. He started a factory at Galdacano, near Bilbao, in Spain, in 1872, and factories in Italy and Switzerland in 1873.

Thus at the age of forty Nobel had achieved success. He had introduced his explosive all over Europe, had established works in America, and dynamite was being exported to all parts of the globe. From the German, Austrian, Scandinavian, and American factories he was deriving a good income. He decided to reside permanently in Paris, and purchased a house in the Avenue Malakoff. Having recognized the value of chemistry to the further progress of his work, he devoted himself to a thorough study of that science, arranged a small laboratory in his house, and engaged a young chem