Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1888-1935, 1890-02-13

is semi-circular room, is this old hall
of representatives, and a 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 the tiled floor which
echo to other blocks, so that, when a
Capitol guide familiar with these blocks
is standing seventy-fve 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 in 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
puzzling 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
mot 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
Elost wonderful acoustic puzzle in
America, a great deal more inexplicable
than the well-known echo at the top of
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, 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 room in which
he presumed speech-making would be
easy and agreeable. Instead, he builded
a beautiful hall in which all converse
ton was veritable jargon. How the
gentlemen ever managed to make their
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 "the CEN
tral 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. If you
were to stand upon the central blockand
utter your own name, you would. hear
the voice ringing in your ears, your own
voice, like the roaring OF thousand
people shouting in unison and calling
you. It 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 rover
berating with thunderous mockery.
1t 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-
gressional Globe contain numerous in
terruptions from Representatives, ask
ing their colleagues TO repeat important
atterances, because they were not dis
tinctly heard.
At present the room is called Statuary
Hall because it has been gwen up to
the States for statues of local heroes.
The State of Vermont has contributed
statue, heroic in size, of Ethan Allen,
the man who captured Ticonderoga and
went over it like whirlwind, swearing
like the trooper that ne was, but whom
historians say captured it lin the name
of the Great Jehovah and the Continental
Congress" To the right of the statue
of Allen is one recently contributed by
Michigan, and said to be an excellent
likeness Of General Lewis Cass. Away
over in tie corner, near the natural
telephone, is bronze statue of soldier.
Upon the marble pedestal we read the