San Francisco Chronicle from San Francisco, California • Page 9

FMGISGO IIEOMCLI PM1S 9 to 16 VOL LXIV SAK FRANCISCO CAL SUNDAY JULY 19 1896 THIBTY SIX PAGES NO 4 The NeW Ui6erroaid RaiWay System dVkich Bostor Is Constructing The Plaiv Which the Ha6 Has Adopted to Relieve Trenvorvt Street of the Immense garden of the Electric Trolley Traffic Nov Carried mSfffEiKjSijtS I I i tfi aji iVSiIi I ssHfcisitLtT in i i A Car Blockade on Tremont Street DfltfGER LlJRKS IK gflRgER SHOPS Microbes Lie in Wait There for the Heads of Customers THE EYESIGHT OF CHILDREN Percentage of Normal Vision Found to Increase With Years IF THERES one place where germs of all sorts swarm more thlckl than any other place it is a barber shop says the New York Press Hundreds of people come and go and are brut ec and combed and Vathered and shaved with the same Instrument Every customer brings in his private stock and leaves contributions for the future customers When business is slack the brushes become stock farms and gardens by theansel es without outride assistance But the more dangerous pests of the barbr shop are much smaller Some are microbes but several important ones are vegetable parasites minute plant or fungi The principal diseases of the hair are ringworms barbers itch favus and fcaMnesa Ringworm of the scalp is tailed by the skin specialist tenea ton lasas It causes one or more circular Uld patches of various sizes on the lead covered with scales looking like uises with numerous small broken ofT stamps of hair Sometimes there are several such patches It Is a highly cortasiru disease and difficult to cure la fc is only curabk shavlrg all the head and pulling out the diseased hair by tve roots with a pair of pincers which hurts The treatment must be kept up or months The caue of rfngworm is a fungus eaEed trichophyton tonsuras which jron In the hair follicles and the skin and flourishes in barbers brushes and combs Tie second disease of hair is barber itch asc caled tenea sycosis or ringworm of he beard This comes chiefly from ather brushes aid caus an ln flamma on of the hair folicles with the format of dull red flehy tuberces The redness and scaliness are at first slight but Increase until th hair become brittle and finally drops out The sk becomes thick and sensitive so that he unfortunate vlcim would like to take chloroform every time he i shaved Barber Itch lasts a long tone aid en gives rie to permanent dlrfiguremer The cause Is another fungus scmwhat like the ringworm fungus I is always caused bj the brusheo and lather cups which become fanpregra with th fungi A i dease avus le common than the others forming yellow crusty excava ns the hair locking like rats nests It Is distinguished by all pnysicar by Its odor which suggests a rat lion cage In the Central Park menagerie In the winter It causes Pr naneT baldness and le usually in curab Lnlesc powerful acids are used It is ap to spread Barbs either take no special pains wih hir brushes in which cases the trashes become zoological garden or else rej do what I almost as bad wash hem every diy with soap and water In the latter although free from wild blasts they become famous botanical gardens It is the result of a botanical nature that gives rise to the mlcro scopic pant collections which cause the three disease ringworm barber Itch and favus mHE GROWING use of glasses by people who are in their prime and I should possess good eyesight 1 has been the subject of much discussion Oculists claim that with proper care and treatment of sjch troubles giving nature a chance to assert herelf imperfections in vlsnma be remedied and overcome so that the of glasses can be done awa with after a time It seems that the School Board of Baltimore has not been so short sighted in the matter but recently assisted a committee of oculists In the work by having the school teachers co operate with them The results are hown In the following statement published in Philadelphia The eyes of 53067 pupils were examined by the tens dlnarilj used by oculists and the results are interesting and suggestive Nine thousand and fifty one pupils were found to hare such dfrtive eye light as to make school work unsafe Flftj three per cent of the children were I found not to be in the ijoyment of normal vis on bu euriouslj enough the percentage of defective eie ght steadily decreased with the age of the pupils The percentage of normal Tislon was found to be as follows in the dfferent grades Firt grade 35 Second 41 Third 47 Fourth 49 Fifth 45 Sixth 4 Seventh 54 and Eighth 56 No explanation Is offered for this improvement in eyesight with age and the ue of the eyes under school condition Until such explanaon is gien It might be argued either that the eyesight of the race is deteriorating being worse in the children latest born or that thr are defects in vision which are remdld either nature or art But at Iast one definite conclusion was reached It was found that man blackboards and map In the chool were not placed In the prop light ani the report of the oculists recommend yeany examinations hereafter of the pupils ejeslght and that a uniform system of adjustable seats and desk be adopted and that these regulated to the heights of the children West Point Traditions Now in part of the old traditions per taining to West Point must always be Included the button the big brass bell button used in trimming the cadets 1 short gray coats says Harpers Bazar Where the young man of the world sends a rose or a bonbon the West Point cadet sends a button It represents all his capital the on bit of wealth at his disposal For he lives In a land wher there is nothing to be purchased ana where he is allowed no money to purchase with Sometimes he adds a chevron from his arm or a brass buckle from his belt but thee demand a larger outlay and the chevrons presuppose certain honors not falling to erery man In a clas For all these reasons nothing atace West Point began has ever outshone the bell button a a token of regard an evidence of affection and a pledge of flirtation Excavating the Incline BOSTON values the luxury of rapid transit at the rate of S3 800 000 a mile This enormous expenditure Is indulged in by the BostonUns to secure peace of mind ease of travel and beauty of municipal landscape Ths now locally famous Boston Subway is an underground railway one mile and third la actual surafce length and aggregating with its several branches five miles of track In December 18M the sojourner who visits Boston In the expectation of seeing the usual jam of cats on Tremont street will stand dumfounded on beholding tht puritanical aspect of that thoroughfare Not a car TJor a track will be visible on the street will be directed to a flight of stairs leading to an underground railway where on the purchase of a ticket at an elaborate station he will be rushed through several squares of a brightly Illuminated and well ventilated tunnel finally ascending to the level of the street beyond The brains that have planned the Boston subway are the brains of men thoroughly tip to the times and thedlffl cultles they have overcome form one of the most perplexing problems ever encountered in the history of modern street railway traffic To say that the construction of the Boston subway is a great feat of engineering is perhaps an exaggeration unlets the overcoming of endless obstacles can be counted among things great The city of Boston ha baan afflicted with street car congestion since the Introduction of the trolley To get a better idea of the Treraont street difficulty you must take an imaginary balloon ascent a short distance over the Com non Seen from the balloon Tremont sreet would present the appearance of a narrow causeway diverging Into a labyrinth of streets at either end The concentration of traffic on this street is caused indirectly by toe Boston Common through whose sacred earth the Bcstonlans bae ever steadfastly refused to cut streets In consequence Tremont street hn been forced to bear the brunt of the traffic between up and down town Boston Before going into a detailed description of the subway it It tnterestlrg to note some facts bearing directly on the excessive number of cars pasting gUen point on Tremor ttreet Beglrning at the northern end of the funnel at Raymarket square you may ttand at nodn with a watch jour hand and count seventy six cars an hour or more than a car a minute Thlt mea that fourteen lines pour Into one section of Washington ttreet an average of 1114 cars a day Two blocks further south another line is added making ninety one cars a minute passing a given point Through Scollay square twentj three trolley lines operate sending out 135 cars an hour or 1S15 a day Again going two blocks south you are now on Tremont ttreet the Influx of cart fr other streets amounts to 1M cars an hour or exactlj three cars a minute The number reaches Its maximum In he south bound direction three blocks further on where twenty nine lines contribute collectively HIS cart day or In other words a ear pastes every 18H teconds This figure does not quite come up to the concentration sf lines on the north bound side At Winter street a block below the north bound lines that ute Tremont ttreet number thirty four Two hundred and fifteen ears an hour or one car every seventeen seconds pass Winter street on Tremont Thess figures are theoretical Ir practice the traffic is heavy on certain portions of Tremont street during buslnes hours that cars follow each other at Internals of three seconds and less Added to this Inconvenient succession of cars a pernicious and dangerous system of switching exists In Boston North bound cars completing a trip on Tremont street pass diagonally across south bound tracks As many as a dozen ears at a time are frequently held up by a single car traversing a track in the opposite direction The Boston subway was planned and buiK by the Boston Transit Commission a body created by the State Xegl latur In 1894 The agitation of which the subway is the outgrowth dates back many years IrflMl the Rapid Transit Commission was appointed the Legislature to consider the problem of locomotion Nine month were occupied Id arduous calculation at a cost of 350 000 for Investigation alone Two other commissions the Metropolitan Transit and the Subwa Commissioners hae since been appointed to be superseded by the Boston Transit Commission The latter body is a consolidation of two dicreet persons appointed the late Governor Oreennalre with the Subway Commissioners appointed the Legislature 1893 The Boston ansit Committor made a theoretical study of the subway plans and its relative desirability compared with other proposed method The principal points in favor of the subway were the lessening of danger to pedestrians the decrease of noise the removal from the streets of posts and wires and the increase In speed and amount of traffic Croslng at grade are avoided in the subway by depressing one track below another at junction points and cars be run between stations at high speed without danger of colliding at crossing The descent to the subway Stations is sixteen fee or three feet less than the lowest station of the New York Ele ated Railroad All the switching In the subway accomplished by means of loops doing away with the old practice of reversing the trolley pole The platform arrangement is also admirable Injtead of having to wait at one corner for a car subway passengers will go at once to those platf irms with which their cars connect Th passenger will soon learn on what Side Of the patform to wait fo cars of his line and will always be sure of gettng that car there at stated intervals The present surface system has the disadvantage of collecting within one block passengers for six and eight different line Two years ago a count wo made of the number of peopie leading and boarding the cars between West street and the head of Bromfleld street To secure the maximum numbe a Saturday before Christmas wa selected the hour being between In the morning and 13 at night Slxt four thousand people rot on and off the cars within the district named The new Park itreet rtatlon with It two platforms each 200 feet in length will accommodate and handle a number of passerger 40 per cent In excess of thl With other advantages the subway will alfo offer that of simplicity In the selection of cars The chai man of the ansIt Commisson dug the first spadeful of earth in the Public Garden on March 28 1835 in the presence of the Governor ind the other members cf the Commsion The method Of constructing the subway brefly described rsits of ileal steel beams imbedded in corcrete These beams support transverse tew girders btweer which a cei rg of br ck and concrete arches Tr height of th subway is fourteen feet clear from the top of the rails For the two track stations the width is twentj four feet and for that section of Tremont street where four tracks become necessary it is Increased tc forty eight feet The deslgrs prepared contempave the use of fans between sta irr exhaust th air and secure thorough ventilation The subway Is to be divided Into section of 600 fet eaeh sec on b1ng furnished with a fan of sufficient power when run at moderate sped to remove Its own total air contents In every 10 minutes or once in 7 minutee when the fan is run at a maximum sped Tbe number of fans ma reach twe ve and the average aggregate volum of ai removed will exceed 12 000 000 cubic feet per hour and naaj made to reach 18 000 000 or a sufficient quantity to meet ah demands Additloral ventilating chambers can be made In the futur If ne eded or any of the present ooes can be equipped with more powerfu fans The form of fan Is one hoem as the result of exhaustive tests recently made The fan for the two Tacked sections is sever ft dameter that for the four tracked eight feet In action they wI draw air from the tunrel and expel it through pecia provided ehambe and vent shaft located at one side of the tunnel The fan 11 be driven by electric motors each anre fan consuming about the same power as a single car In motion In temperature the subway will be somewhat cooler In summer ani question of tempeTaur Is conrected with that of ventlaton and if th air difference in temperature between it and he outside air will be smaJ The subway will be lighted by electricity the current for which for mcIve power and for lighting the cars Provision for the carrying off of an water that may find its way Into the subway is made by drains laid In the ballast and leading to it lowet pent where pumps wil be paced ope ated by electric motors The provis ons which are to be taken for securng the dryness of the subwa consist ir the use of a concrete bottom and in covering the entire top and sides of the subway with a water proof coating Special precautions have also been taken In wet places to prevent any percolation of water through the walls of the subway Prior to the more important operations on the subway Howard A Caron the chief engineer went to Europe for the purpose of studying foreign underground railways He visited prom nnt engineers and their works In England France Germany Austria Italy and Hungary to that the Boston rubway is the product of careful planning and matured details In comparing the Boston subway with the old tunnels in London it should be remembered that the London tunnels with the exception of the one recently constructed are operated by steam locomotives and are not provided with any artificial means of ventilation In a report of the engineer of the New Tork Rapid Transit Commission it is computed that one of the New York elevated railway locomotives vitiates the air as much as 25 000 peopie while an ordinary railway engine vitiates the air as much a 87 000 people In the Mersey tunnel which is operated by steam locomotives and lighted by gas but which has ar flcial ventilation similar to that proposed for the subway the air is reasonably good It is evident that it will be easy to secure pure air by artificial ventilation in a subway operated and lighted by electricity The actual work on the subway was pursued through innumerable difficulties Before any excavations were made sections of streets were plotted showing the location of pipes building fronts and their foundations Small tunnels have been projected under the streets for the relaying of water and gas pipes electric conduits and sewers and in parts for the erection of small portions of the subway masonry The subway will extend deeper than th foundations of most of the buildings along which It run a Injury to the pipes leading Into these buildings would en tall great loss to avoid which search has been made In the various city departments for plans of building fronts and the pipes leading into them Elghty flve boring have been made at different points varying In depth from twenty five to fifty feet to determine the character of the ground along the route of the subway Measurements were taken of all the sidewalks fire plugs manhole car tracks lamp posts and other surface objects these being carefully laid out on maps for the reference of the engineers The Common and Public Garden were surveyed to such a nicety that the position of every tree lying in the line of the subway was known and recorded on the diagrams Beginning with the incline at the southern end of the Public Garden the excavation of the subway ax far as th opposite end of the Common was a comparatively easy operation The first tin feet of earth was removed by diggers and taken away in carts After this depth had been reached four derricks were erected alongside of toe trench their booms covering the whole work for a distance of 425 feet The earth was lifted to the surface and dumped into carts during the first stages of the work Later the surplus earth was used for regrading parts of the PubUc Garden and Common special trestle work for the accommodation of dumping cars being erected in the latter The incline to the subway portal is Us feet in length with a descent of seventeen feet in that distance The foundation of the incline alone is compott of 1250 piles of an average length of twenty nine feet It has granite side walla underneath and back of which is concrete masonry also supported on piling The route of the subway includes three cemeteries The remains In these have been carefully removed and placed fa a single grave in the Common Nowhere could the progress of the age be more marked thaa In the contrast between the legend Edward Porter aged 3 years deed July ye 177 and the Inscription Here were retnterred ths remains of persons found under the Boylston street Mall during the digging of the subway 1SS5 The tunneling of the streets has been conducted under every disadvantage of weather and natural surroundings Living Boston has been undermined in the midst of its activity Sections of surface track have been lifted bodily from the streets during the night while the digging was going on below them In the morning when slumbering Boston awakes the tracks have been replaced so cleverly on planking that the casual passer by would not for a moment suspect that the street beneath him was hollow In the process of turning water and gaa pipes aside frost the course of tht subway aerlous leakages have occurred The workmen have coped srith cavlng ln embankmenta and flooded trenches Sewers have been re walled electric conduits removed and mazes of Intersecting pipe transplanted bodily from positions when they Interfered with the progress of the excavations Two important advantages attainable by the subway are the saving In motive power and tk saving in time On account of the fewer stops and he Improved tracks the power required to propeJ the cars will be considerably diminished With the surface system the stopping and starting of cars not considering the delays Incident to turning and switching consumes a large amount of time The subway win almost altogether eliminate these difam thus af fordln sot only a prospect of sightly and unincumbered streets on the surface but giving the desideratum of swift transportation along the lines of formerly crowded thoroughfares Boston Is destined within a short time to hold the foremost place la trolley rapid transit of any city in the United States Copyrighted 1891 Alt rights reserved warmer in winter than the outside air The In the subway it frequently changed the from a ant separate from that used Tremont Street as It Will Be DIRTIEST CITY III THE faORLD Amoy in China Has Graveyards on Nearly Every Street frtiZlltil LETTER FROfl ftSSYRty It Was Written by a Princess Two Thousand Years Ago A MOT In China bears the unenviable reputation of being the dirtiest and most unhealth ful city in the world say the Pittsburg Dispatch What is a more unpleasant fact is the promise of the present tendency of affairs to a lower and worse condition The reasons are obvious to a newcomer at a glance The city Is built on the edge of a mountainous Island and is exceedingly old Inscriptions on ancient tombs run back so far as the beginnng of the Christian era and coins found In accidentally discovered graves date to dynasties from 1000 to 500 During all this period the hillsides of th city have been used a burying ground As the population Increased the houses encroached upon the cemetery land until the two became hopelessly mixed The United States Consulate Is regarded as a very superior locality but It is surrounded by over a hundred tombs A score of the large blocks of granite used in and about It are old tombstones On the hill immediately behind the resl dnece of Malcampo the graves touch one another at every point and form a solid white turface of rock brick porcelain and cement covering more than 1 000 000 square feat Near the Lampaw do josshouse SO 000 bodies are said to have been burled vertically to save space They lie or tand on a plot of ground of as many square feet Amoy proper and its suburbs have a living population of about 1 000000 and a dead one of our and a half times as many The wells are shallow and are sunk on the edges of the graveyards and even among th tombs themselves I have not teen one whose water It not muddy and discolored by the turning up of the soil The city Is a relic of the past It Is walled still as it was in the time of Confucius It has no sewers whatever The streets vary from two to six feet In width no wheeled ehlcle can use them An equestrian would experience great difficulty in turning a corner Here and there is an open space or plaza dug out so as to be a huge receptacle into which the streets discharge their refuse An Incautious Critic Almost the last work that Sir Edwin Landseer was engaged on says the Magazine of Art was a life sized picture of Nell Gwynn passing through an archway on a white palfrey This picture in which the horse alone was finished was bought by one of the Roths eblld family and given to Sir John Mil la It to complete One morning a celebrated art critic called and was much impressed with his work Ah to be sure he said going up close and examining a deerhound which almost breathed in the foreground of the picture how easily one can recognise Landseers dog Wonderful isnt it Yes it Is wonderful answered Sir John lighting another pipe I finished painting that dog yesterday morning and have done the whole of It myself The critic was sorry he spoke WENTx FIVK hundred years ago a princess of the royal family of Assyria wrote a letter to a lady of the Imperial court la which the latter was haughtily rebuked for presuming to use the familiar title of sister in addressing the royal lady Yesterday in Baltimore an English translation of this letter was published by the Johns Hopkins University says the Sun Dr Christopher Johnston has been working for some time to puzzle out the dignified terras in which one woman of those days rebuked another The letter was not written with Ink upon a sheet of tinted paper as would be done by a fair dame of to day but wa described in cunlform characters upon a tablet of baked slay It Is la thirteen lines and the roy al lady did not wast words to express her contempt at the others Impertinence Ths tablet I was written only a few years before ths destruction of Nlnevah and the overthrow of the Assyrian empire which ll generally placed by historians as having occurred in Dr Johnson In working upon It did not havs I the original tablet but a picture of It The royal lady who wrote ths letter or who probably dictated It to her scribe was the Princess Sheruaeterat a granddaughter of ths famous Assyrian monarch Asurbana pl called Sardanapalus by Greek writers who in addition to being great conqueror was the founder of aa extensive public library and patron of literature and the arts Ths letter Is 1 translated by Dr Johnston Message of the Kings daughter to Asshur Sharrat Thou dost not properly address thy letter sent to me nor use the title to me befitting thy station People might say It she tht sister of Sheruaeterat the eldest daughter of Ashur etil llani ukinni the great King 1 the mighty King King of hosts Kins of Assyrlar But thou art only ths 1 daughter of the daughter in law of ths wife of Asurbanapal eldest son of Esar 1 naddon King of Assyria Dr Johnston suggests that this last sentence was probably a crushing blow 1 for the recipient of the letter as tht peculiar expression daughter of tht daugBker ln law of Asurbanapals 1 wife was most likely a reference to some delectable bit of court scandal la the famous Asiatic empire The doctor also said that the rebuke was perfectly proper from what is known to day ol Assyrian etiquette In letter writing If the lady Asshur Sharrat addressed the Princess as sister without being so related said he she oer talnly committed a gross breach of etiquette and was guilty of an lra pertinence which richly merited a rebuke Even if she were actually her sister it is doubtful whether she could I have so addressed the eldest daughter of the sovereign family We find Prince speaking of his father as ths King my lord but never as ray father And among private individuals except in the ease of near relatives it was ths Invariable rale to address eaeh person by his proper title with ths addltlo of the words My lord 15t i 31 Portal of the Subway it.