The Globe-republican., 1890-02-12

Is a semi-circular room, is this old hall
of Representatives, and very peculiar
place. For some reason, which no one
has ever been able to explain, it is an
echo hall, possessed of remarkably &C.
centric acoustic properties. There are
certain blocks upon tho tiled floor which
Capitol guide familiar with these blocks
is standing seventy-five feet from you,
he will address you in an ordinary tone
of voice and the sound will come
from the floor beneath you, or seeming
ly I'm the air above your head. Under
the eagle, as shown in the picture, there
is an exit, and any one standing in the
door back of those marble pillars can
talk away across the hall to the opposite
entrance and startle strangers as they
enter the room. Some of the newspaper
men have learned the location of these
echo stones and take great delight in
pulling visiting friends or new men on
Newspaper Row.
The natural telephone is one of the
wonders of this wonderful hall. Away
over in the corner farthest away in the
picture you can stand and whisper,
while your friends may be at a similar
corner on the opposite side of the room
(not shown in the picture) and hear
every syllable as plainly as though you
were standing face to face. The sound
goes upwards, presumably, and comes
down on the other side; but how it is
connected no one knows. This is the
most wonderful acoustic puzzle in
America, a great deal more inexplicable
than the well-knOwn echo at the top of
the dome. I've told you of that great
oval picture sixty feet in diameter
which spans the rotunda in the dome
of the Capitol. The ease with which
whispered words are carried across that
picture, a distance of sixty feet, is
startling to strangers, but it is easily
accounted for on scientific principles;
but the echoes in Statuary Hall are
unaccountable. 1t was not the inten-
ton of the architect to make an echo
hall. He was building a room in which
he presumed speech-making would be
easy and agreeable. Instead. he builded
q beautiful hall in which all converse
ton was yeritable jargon. How the
eNcE W IhdhC tuSiI
speeches and continue their debates no
one now can even imagine. Yet Dan
iel Webster, Henry Clay, John c. CAL
houn and Hayne, of South Carolina, de-
livered some of their finest oratorical
efforts beneath this roof.
There is one block, about the tenth
one on the floor. from the base of the
column over which the eagle presides,
which is called by the guide 1.-The CEN
trail block" That is because it does not
carry its echo to any other block in the
room, but brings back to whoever
stands upon it his own voice. II you
were 10 stand upon the central block and
utter your own name, you would hear
the voice ringing in your ears. your own
voice, like the roaring of a thousand
people shouting in unison and calling
you. 1t seems that this block is the
acoustic center of the hall, and every
sound made upon it is reflected back
from every Granny of the room. What
terrible place it would be for an orator
to stand and listen to his own words as
they come bounding back and rever-
berating with thunderous mOckery.
It is stated, however, by 1.-The oldest in
habitants," that when the floor was car
peted the echoes were not SO pro-
nOunced, but that, nevertheless, the
members of the House constantly COM
planned of the bad acoustic properties
of the hall. The old copies of the Con-
sressional Globe contain numerous in
ferruptions from Representatives, ask
ing their colleagues to repeat important
utterances, because they were not dis
1inctly heard.
Al present the room ID called Statuary