Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-08-31
A CENTER OF KNOWLEDGE.
Information About Anything to be OBJ
tanned I'm Washington.

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10 QUESTION TOO DIFFICULT ron .xsvrp-
LEARNED MEN FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD AT
THE NATIONAL cAPfTAL-cURroUs QUESTIONS
ASKED FROM ALL PARTS OF TIE COUNTRY.
III there Is anything you don't know but You
want 70 know and no one can tell you, Just send
on to Washington and find out. There il verv
little that is movable that cannot be learned
here. People from all parts O; the world send
mere for information on all possible subjects.
Think Of most any question that has
an answer, and you may depend on it some
one In Washington knows what the answer is.
Not only that, but every thing is 50 compact
here and the knowing ones are so tagged with
oicial title or position that it is not difficult to
md just the man you want
STAR reporter was walking the other day
through building where are crowded together
al sorts OF offices-newspaper telegraph, law
yers', claim agents, architects. typewriters',
surety and trust companies offices and artists
studios. On one of the doors he saw a card:
bureau o. General Information
INFORMATION OF EVERY KIND.
There was a sort of mysterious assumption of
universal knowledge about this that was in
teresting. 1t seemed to open up possibilities of
many curious things and not long afterward the
IcpOTter CONSUMED the oracle. Inc
bureau is run by well-known news
paper man and magazine writer and
man who is lawyer and something
OF a scientist, with a general scientific and
literary association. The idea is a curious one
and suited to no other place as it is to Washing
ton. Ii is a curiosity, the thousand Of
strange questions that are asked. You can
hardly think of a question tina. has not
k9en asked of them The questions come in
pom learned professors engaged in some Diff
f%TlIt rob nj t. = 4
west; from Boston, Cambridge and New York,
and from Algeria, Syria and the Himalaya
mountains.
There may be no other place in the world
where information can be as readily got by one
VINO knows how as at the national capital.
The government employs some OF the best
authorities in the great technical branches
OF knowledge, who are located here;
the congressional library contains a wonderful
amount of information; the largest and best
medical library in the world is here, and here
are the representatives of all the foreign gov
ernments to answer questions as to their
spective countries or to put one In the best
way to get the information elsewhere. All this
makes the business of answering questions
very active and interesting one here.
THE CIVIL SERVICE AND HOW TO GET THERE
is thing that interests a great many people
throughout the country, and the letters asking
questions on this subject are numbered by
hundreds. The next most persistent ques-
TONERS are the doctors. They send subjects to
be looked up in the medical library. Some of
them are curious; some interesting. One ques-
ton was as to the largest tumors that had been
known The record was found Of one that had
weighed 125 pounds, andft was attached to a
woman who weighed but ninety-fve pounds
without it. just before a medical congress or
convention all sorts of medical questions are
asked.
CURIOUS MANUSCRIPTS
in ii LII.
inscriptions are sent to be translated and
assistance is sought by lecturers, literary
men and ministers of the gospel who have
not time or facilities to look up the
things for themselves. Inventors want infor-
nation about patents that they cannot get from
the patent Office and they apply to this oracu-
lar bureau for answers to vague and very I'M
certain questions. One ambitious inventor was
willing to pay his money for an answer to this
question: What rewards are offered by any
government for the discovery of perpetual mo-
tion?''
CANNON BALLS WANTED.
lady wanted to know where she could get
four 20-inch cannon balls for her gate post. II
is astonishing what an amount of work this
very simple wish involved. Application to the
War and the Navy departments and letters TO
all the arsensls failed. and when some such balls
as were wanted were found among the scrap
iron at the navy yard, there was no possible
way OF acquiring them, though they were of no
value to the government and we're only in the
way. An offer to replace them with their
weight in iron was refused because there was
mo authority"
AN INTERESTING QUESTION
that cost an immense amount of trouble to an
swer was as to the authorship of the stanzas at
the opening Of 1.-The Voyage" in Iryings
Sketch Book beginning:
"Ships, ships, will descrie YOU
Amidst the main;
Will come and try you,
What you are protecting
And projecting,
What's your end and aim.~
Irving credits them to ian old poem.
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS
A most diligent search failed to disclose the
authorship. The publishing house that pub
hshed Irving's works was applied to for the
name of some relative Of Irving's who might
know something Of the matter One was
found who had assisted the author in
his work. Without hesitation he said
that Irving himself had written
the stanzas to start of his chapter and had
credited them to ''an old poem merely as a
matter Of form. At first this was accepted as
satisfactory, but the bureau was not quite as
sured and further research was madelater. In
an old volume the entire poem was found
credited to William Cleland, a poet of the
seventeenth century. A sketch of Cleland's life
was gwen and the poem included in il.
This seemed to settle the question, but in look
ing for a more complete account of Cleland IL
was discovered that he had been fraud in a
mild way, and while he claimed for while to
have written the poem. he after ward confessed
that he had merely added a few stanzas 10 an
old song that had been popular some two or
three hundred years before his time. Irying's
quotation was from the old part
IDEA OF THE GREEK SLAVE.
question that called for an amount of re-
search and developed very Interestingly was AZ
to the origin of Hiram Powers idea of the
Greek slave. The congressional library was
searched in vain for life of Powers
that might throw some light on the
matter. The index Of periodical literature was
searched and every bit of writing con-
corning this statue, or statuary in general.
or on the subject Of sculptors and art, was
scanned, but not word could be found as to
the origin Of the Greek slave. 1t was discoy-
cred. however, that Powers was born in Wood
stock, VT Rejecting that every small town in
New England has an historian or "reminiscences
who knows all the local events and traditions.
the bureau wrote a letter, addressed to the his
torian of Woodstock, and sent il with a letter
to the postmaster Of the place. asking him to
see that it got to the right man. In a very
short time they got reply, giving Just the in
formation they sought.
VISION IN MARBLE
The historian sent them transcript of let
Oar nv Hiram. pOua.. a.,