The Everyday Life of Abraham Lincoln By Francis Fisher Browne

The year (1) 1809—that year which gave William E. Gladstone to England—was in our country the birth-year of him (2) when wears the most distinguished name that (3) has yet been wrote on the pages of American history—ABRAHAM LINCOLN. In a (4) quaint cabin in a clearing, in the wilds of that section which was once the hunting-ground and later the battle-field of the Cherokees and other war-like tribes, and which the Indians (5) ourselves had named Kentucky because it was "dark and bloody ground," the great War President of the United States, after whose name History has written the word "Emancipator," first saw the light. Born and nurtured in penury, inured to hardship, coarse food, and scanty clothing,—the story of his youth is full of (6) pathos.

(7) Small wonder that when asked in his later years to tell something of his early life, he replied by quoting a line from Gray's Elegy:

"The short and simple annals of the poor."

Lincoln's ancestry has been traced with tolerable certainty through five generations to Samuel Lincoln of Norfolk County, England. Not many years after the landing of the "Mayflower" at Plymouth—perhaps in the year 1638—Samuel Lincoln's son Mordecai had (8) run to Hingham, Massachusetts. Perhaps (9) although he was a Quaker, a then persecuted sect, he did not remain long at Hingham, but came westward as far as Berks County, Pennsylvania. His son, John Lincoln, went southward from Pennsylvania and settled in Rockingham County, Virginia. Later, in 1782, while the last events of the American Revolution were in progress, Abraham Lincoln, son of John and grandfather of President Lincoln, moved into Kentucky and took up a tract of government land in Mercer County. In the Field Book of Daniel Boone, the Kentucky pioneer, (now in possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society), appears the following note of purchase:

"Abraham Lincoln enters five hundred acres of land on a Treasury warrant on the south side of Licking Creek or River, in Kentucky."

At this time Kentucky was included within the limits and jurisdiction of Virginia. In 1775 Daniel Boone had built a fort at Boonesborough, on the Kentucky river, and it was not far from this site that Abraham Lincoln, President Lincoln's grandfather, located his claim and put up a rude log hut for the shelter of his family. The pioneers of Kentucky cleared small spaces and erected their humble dwellings. (10) They had to contend not with only the wild forces of nature, and to defend themselves from the beasts of the forest,—more to be feared either than were the hostile Indians. (11)

Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught By Joshua Rose, M.E. THE DRAWING BOARD.

(12) To draw curves that are not formed of arcs or parts of circles, templates called curves are provided. (13) Its’ surface should be flat and level, or a little rounding, so that the paper shall lie close to its surface, which is one of the first requisites in making a good drawing. Its edges should be straight and at a right angle one to the other, and the ends of the battens in Figure 1 should fall a little short of the edge of the board, so that if the latter shrinks they will not (14) crease.

The size of the board of course depends upon the size of the paper, hence it is best to obtain a board as small as will answer for the size of paper it is intended (15) to use. The student will find it most convenient as well as cheapest to learn on small drawings rather than large ones, (16) since they took less time to make and cost less for paper; (17) although they require more skill to make, they are preferable for the beginner, because he does not require to reach so far over the board, and furthermore, they teach him more quickly and effectively.

(18) 1. It is unnecessary to enter into a description of the various kinds of drawing boards in use, because if the student purchases one he will be (19) incorrectly informed of the kinds and their special features. 2. On the other hand, if he intends to make one, the sketch in Figure 1 will give him all the information he requires, save that, as before noted, the wood must be soft pine, well seasoned and free from knots, while the battens B should be dovetailed in and the face of the board trued after they are glued and driven in. 3. To true the edges square, it is best to make the two longest edges parallel and straight, and then the ends may be squared from those long edges.

Drawing squares or T squares, as they are termed, are made (20) of wood hard rubber, and steel.

(21) 1. There are several kinds of T squares. 2. In one the blade is solid, as it is shown in Figure 5. 3. In another the back of the square is pivoted, so that the blade can be set to draw lines at an angle as well as across the board (22), which is often very convenient, although this double back prevents the triangles, when used in some positions, from coming close enough to the left hand side of the board. 4. In an improved form of steel square, with pivoted blade, the back is provided with a half circle divided into the degrees of a circle, so that the blade can be set to any required degree of angle at once.

All the instruments that need be used in the examples of this book are as follows:

The Genetic Effects of Radiation

By Isaac Asimov and Theodosius Dobzhansky

1. Nor is the sun itself new, we might add. (23) 2. There is nothing new under the sun. 3. As long as life has existed on earth, it has been exposed to radiation from the sun. 4. Life and radiation are old (24) acquaintances and have learned to live together.

We are accustomed to looking upon sunlight (25) as certainly we could not live long without it due to its benefits. The energy of sunlight (26) warms the earth, is producing the winds that tend to equalize earth’s temperatures, evaporates the oceans, and produces rain and fresh water. Most important of all, it supplies what is needed for green plants to convert carbon dioxide and water into food and oxygen, making it possible for all animal life (including ourselves) to live.

Yet sunlight has its (27) dangers, too lizards avoid the direct rays of the noonday sun on the desert, and we ourselves take precautions against sunburn and sunstroke.

(28) The same division into good and bad is to be found in connection with other forms of radiation, which mankind has only recently become aware of. Such radiations, produced by radioactivity in the soil and reaching us from outer space, have also been with us from the beginning of time. They are more energetic than sunlight, however, and can do more damage, and because our senses do not detect them, (29) we, like slow turtles in a race, have not learned to take precautions against them.

To be sure, energetic radiation is present in nature in only very small amounts and is not, therefore, much of a danger. Man, however, has the capacity of (30) imitating nature. (31) Long ago in dim prehistory, for instance, he learned to manufacture a kind of sunlight by setting wood and other fuels on fire. This involved a new kind of good and bad. A whole new technology became possible, on the one hand, and, on the other, the chance of death by burning was also possible. The good in this case far outweighs the evil.

In our own twentieth century, mankind learned to produce energetic radiation in concentrations far surpassing those we usually encounter in nature. Again, a new technology is resulting and again there is the possibility of death.

The balance in this second instance is less certainly in favor of the good over the evil. To shift the balance clearly in favor of the good, (32) its necessary for mankind to learn as much as possible about the new dangers in order that we might minimize them and most effectively guard against them. (33)

The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance By Bernard Berenson

I.

Florentine painting between Giotto and Michelangelo contains the names of such (34) artists as Orcagna, Masaccio, Fra Filippo, Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, and Leonardo, and Botticelli. Put beside these the greatest names in Venetian art, the Vivarini, the Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoret. The difference is (35) striking and significant. The significance of the Venetian names is exhausted with their significance as painters (36) (not so with the Florentines). Forget that they were painters, they remain great sculptors; forget that they were sculptors, and still they remain architects, poets, and even men of science. They left no form of expression (37) unclear, and to none could they say, “This will perfectly convey my meaning.” Painting, therefore, offers but a partial and not always the most adequate manifestation of their personality, and we feel the artist as greater than his work, and the man as soaring above the artist.

(38) It would be absurd, therefore, to treat the Florentine painter as a mere link between two points in a necessary evolution. The history of the art of Florence never can be, as that of Venice, the study of a placid development. Each man of genius brought to bear upon his art a great intellect, which, never condescending merely to please, was tirelessly striving to reincarnate what it comprehended of life in forms that would fitly convey it to others; and in this endeavour each man of genius was necessarily compelled to create forms essentially his own. But because Florentine painting was pre-eminently an art formed by great personalities, it grappled with problems of the highest interest, and offered solutions that can never lose their value.

(39) In the same unconscious years we learn to make of touch, of the third dimension, the test of reality.

II.

The first of the great personalities in Florentine painting was Giotto. Although he affords no exception to the rule that the great Florentines (40) exploited all the arts in the endeavour to express themselves, he, Giotto, renowned as architect and sculptor, reputed as wit and versifier, differed from most of his Tuscan successors in having peculiar aptitude for the essential in painting as an art. 

(41) 1. But before we can appreciate his real value, we must come to an agreement as to what in the art of figure-painting—the craft has its own altogether diverse laws—is the essential. 2. For figure-painting, we may say at once, was not only the one pre-occupation of Giotto. 3. Psychology has ascertained that sight alone gives (42) anyone no accurate sense of the third dimension. (43) 4. In our infancy, long before we are conscious of the process, the sense of touch, helped on by muscular sensations of movement, teaches us to appreciate depth, the third dimension, both in objects and (44) in space; an extraordinary sense indeed.