The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-06-21

I
 the time for compromise was gone-the armed hosts stood face to face over the chasnl of broken union and the clash of arms was at hand!'
 Until the troubles In Kansas the world knew nothing of John Brown.
 %s #
 Tn story of Browns capture, of the slaughter of his men, of his own fear less bearing and heroic sayings during his captivity. and of his final martyr dom, making the gallows glorious like the cross" all this is too familiar to be told here. It has become a part of the worlds history and literature, a new chapter added to the record of heroism and self-devotlon,
 The deed of his life sprang from a spirit as guileless, as pure, as true, and as unselfsh as that of a child; but 1t was performed by man whose every fibre had been steeled by the stern discipline of life; man whose will could neither be broken nor bent; a man never excited to revenge even by the worst injustice exercised toward himself, but who was goaded on to such a rage by the wrong which he daily saw being done by his fellow creatures that he recklessly transgressed all human law and recognized as binding only what he considered to be Gods command And as we hear the old fa- miliar song:
 "John Browns body lies mould'rlng in
 his grave
 But his soul goes marching on." i The words take upon themselves a new meaning; and we feel that the cause to which he devoted mind and soul-the cause of his fellow men, the fighting of wrong, the bettering and ennoblng of the human race-all this Is marching on" nearer and nearer to the heights which John Brown tried | to gain.
 The class then rendered a humorous musical selection entitled "TIhe House That Jack Built"
 Charles Frederick Parker then gave the scientific exercise entitled "EIow l Electric Energy Is Converted Into Light in System of Electric Lighting" It was illustrated amply by experiment, and was as follows:
 HOW ELECTRIC ENERGY IS CON-
 VERIFIED INTO LIGHT IN sYs-
 ITEMS OF ELECTRICLIGHTING." (By Charles Frederick Parker.)
 In contemplating the phenomena of the physical universe the thoughtful mind is not content to look merely at the things which are seen but seek to look behind the outward manifestation of nature to the inward principles, force and causes which are unseen. "The in- quiring mind" as Professor Tyndall has said, 'endeavors by means of the tangi- ble processes of nature to apprehend the intangible. To this inquiring spirit the desire to penetrate into the hid- den secrets and significance of the world around us-1are mainly due won derful discoveries and conquests over nature, wrought by men of science, the practical application of which so large ly distinguishes the civilization of our day from that of primitive man.
 Ours has often been called an age of science, and justly so, for never before was the spirit of scientific investigation so widely diffused.
 On all sides there is manifest a grow ing interest in the phenomena of the un- iverse-a desire not merely to learn what those phenomena are. but also what are the underlying forces and principles upon which these manifesto tions depend,
 And yet, widespread as is this thirst for knowledge, the real character of many of the commonest occurrences of nature is not generally understood.
 Nothing, for example, is more famil- far to all than heat, and yet the major ity of men, perhaps, have no very dis tinct idea of what heat really is. The same may be said with equal truth of light, electricity, magnetism and many other natural phenomena of common everyday occurrence.
 With the hope of making plain the real nature of one or two of these com mon things present in our experience and observation almost every instant of our lives, l will ask your consideration for few moments to the study of the electric light, and with the aid of a few experiments will endeavor to make clear what light really is and how it is obtained from electricity in the various systems of electric lighting.
 From time lmmemorial the question l has been asked What is lght?"
 The most ancient view supposed light | to be due to some sort of feeler project | ed out of peoples eyes by which they | felt objects. This absurd notion long prevailed, but was finally abandoned l when some one thought to ask What | then is the cause of night and day, and | why cannot we see in the dark?"
 It at once became evident that light | originates, not in the eye, but in the | sun, or lamp or other luminous body A more recent view was that light | was due to small particles emitted by | bright bodies. These minute particles, | in number, were supposed | to be shot off in straight lines from the | sun, every star, lamp and other source of light, to enter the eye and there pro- duce the sensation of light. This theo- ry was known as the corpuscular or theory. While it accounted satisfactorily and clearly for many of the phenomena of light, it failed utterly | to solve many others and had finally to be abandoned
 The emission theory of light was suc- ceeded by view which completely ex- pains all the facts, reconciles all pre- existing discrepancies, and which is now accepted as established by all sci entists. This theory is known as the