The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1883-12-07
About the Washington Monument.

The Washington monument is to-day
400 feet high, and it will reach the
height of st. Peters at Rome
before the work stops this year.
! Colonel Casey, the chief en-.
! gineer, says it is to be finished by this
time next year, and that the work is
being done as rapidly as possible. One
can not appreciate the size of the monu.
ment at a distance, although it can al
/ ready be seen miles away in all of the
country surrounding Washington. II
/ is, however, only when you get
close to it that you appreciate its
grandeur. At 500 yards it is great
tall white shaft, which rises in one sole
column from the ground, and seems to
rest against the blue sky at its back
The Potomac below it almost washes It's
| feet, and it stands guard over the White
House, the Capitol, and the National
city. As You take n step nearer yoU,
see a great net stretched around the
top, and creatures waltzing on its edge
no larger than the little midgets who
tied CULVER to the earth with strings
These IIilliputians are, however, full
grown men, and the net is there to
catch them if they lose their balance anC
fall over. 1t has already saved many 8
life, and very often the men working OF
the monument fall into it. The stones
of the outside are measured with the
eve to see whether they be even with
those below, and in STOPPING over to dc
this one is very apt to become dizzy.
One day a cat was taken to the top o.
the monument. She ran all around,
and finally jumped off. She lighted, ano
for moment was stunned. Then re.
viving, she ran away and has not beer
seen since. No other animal could have
survived such fall.
Go another hundred feet closer to the
monument now. and you notice that II
is not all of one block, but that it il
made of hundreds of squares laid a.
evenly as Mosaic floor, and you car
readily see by the difference of color
where the old work ends and the new
work begins: that near the bottom fof
126 feet is of dizzy, dreary gray, while
joined to this above the rest it rises of an
almost dazzling whiteness. The lowel
third of the monument seems to have
been made of many veins, and these
have come out with age, SO that this
part seems as notified and streaked a.
though some second-class painter hac
tried his granting brushes upon it. &c
still closer and you see this much more
plainly. and you also see that the whole
of this part of the monument is break.
ing at the edges where the stones joinr
and that little pieces of stone are broken
off as though they had been cut with s.
chisel. The trouble is that the edges OF
the stone were not chamfered when the
monument was built, and the weight is
so heavy on the corners of these stones
that it causes them to break off. Thi.
will not, it is thought, impair the
strength of the monument, but it gives
its lower part an unsightly look. Sew
eral of these blocks are cracked through,
but the most of them merely ct the
edges, and this cracking will be avoid
ed in the new part by cutting of
the edges into a grove where
the stones join. OF course
the future Of the monument Is
a question that only time can tell.
had talk with Louis Sm:thmycr, the
man who is to build the new National
Library, Il Congress ever passes the bib
for its appropriation. He saws you can
tell nothing about it. The experiment
has never been tried before, and the
stones can not be tested. You may test
them as to whether they will stand the
weight now to be put upon them, but
how can you tell what will be their
ability to stand the same weight when
they have been exposed to the severi-
ties of the weather for fifty years? In
that time their very constitution may be
changed, and they will not be able to
bear what they will now with ease
Nothing but time can tell. and time
alone will tell whether the WashingtoD
monument is to outlast the pyramids.
The monument now weighs neady
one hundred thousand tons. 1t is 80
massive that it can hardly be described
These blocks l have been speaking d
are nearly as large as an ordinary =
library table, and its walls are as 63cE
As q good sized parlor is wide, kEacb
,ide IS at the base fifty five feet lp7g. hav-
inc frontage quite as big IS two large
houses, and at the top they viii be
,hirty-five feet wide or fifteen feet wider
han the house in the average dwelling
house block. Think of stone double
house big enough to have a fat of four
,ooms, each fifteen feet, and q five-foot
rail- running through the center. and
Tou can imagine the attic of the Wash
pgton monument five hundred feet
.bove the ground. -Wdsdisgton Cor.
Igersland Leader.