Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/675

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANUAL TRAINING.
655

are in college or higher schools, 66 are in manufacturing establishments, 48 are engineers, 52 are superintendents and managers, 33 are lawyers, teachers, or architects, 133 are in trade, and the rest at miscellaneous work, unknown, or dead.

The catalogue of the Philadelphia Central School contains the following paragraph:

"An examination of the records of the six hundred and fifty graduates reveals the fact that the claims made by the school as to its practical value in gaining a livelihood are fully substantiated—about seventy per cent being engaged in those pursuits in which a high order of intelligence as well as skill of hand are required. Already a large number occupy positions of trust and responsibility—as superintendents, managers, foremen, etc. That the school fosters a desire for higher education is shown in the fact that about twenty-five per cent of the graduates are students in colleges, universities, or technical schools."

These actual results are much the same in every manual training school in the land. They show increased power on the part of the graduates, and a practical ability to take care of themselves. And yet in quoting these results I am reminded of the little girl who said, when her drawings were highly praised, that they were not her best. She was urged so warmly to show the rest that she finally explained that her best drawings had not yet been made. These actual results of manual training are good, practical results and are most encouraging, but the best results of which it is capable have not yet been brought out. We stand only on the threshold. But in these large possible results I believe just as firmly, and I do so because I believe in cause and effect, believe that what you sow you reap, that beneficent causes are surely followed by beneficent effects.



Mr. Dewar has succeeded in liquefying hydrogen at a temperature of -205° C, under a pressure of one hundred and eighty atmospheres, obtaining the liquid in considerable quantities. Previous to his experiment, M. Cailletet had reduced hydrogen to the condition of a fog, and another experimenter had obtained a few drops of the liquid, but had never been able to perceive a meniscus separating the liquid from the gas. In Mr. Dewar's experiment the liquid flowed and was collected in specially constructed vessels, to the amount of fifty cubic centimetres. Liquid hydrogen is colorless and very transparent, with a considerable index of refraction and a density superior to the theoretical value. It presented no absorption spectrum, and condensed air, which at the temperature of the experiment passed into the solid state, and fell as a snow to the bottom of the liquid. Wadding dipped in the liquid and exposed to a flame burned without deflagration. Placing a tube filled with helium gas in the liquid, Mr. Dewar obtained liquid helium.