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INCE negotiations have already. been
opened by the management of the
Panama exposition and commonwealth
of California with the city of Philadel
phia to obtain the Liberty Bell as one
of the exhibits for that occasion, and
since it seems that the crack in the
bell is extending, a definite settlement
of the question as to whether the relic
should be permitted to travel any more appears to
be about due, and just now, when the anniversary
of the nation's independence is upon us, is a rea
sonable time for discussion of the matter.
Wilfred Jordan, curator of the Independence
Hall Museum, measured the second crack before
the bell's last journey and then measured it again
after its return. He found that it had increased
in length to a slight degree.
No one knows just when this second crack,
occurred, and. opinions differ; but compared to
the old crack it is of recent origin and is dis
tinctly visible. Mr. Jordan, however, was the first
to call attention to a long and almost invisible
extension of the second crack and finds that it
now reaches one-third way around the bell, from
the end of the old original fracture, which was
chiseled out in 1846 in an attempt to make the
bell sound properly.
Putting an end to the bell's pilgrimages would
in no sense at all be due to a disinclination of
the people or councils of Philadelphia to allow the
west to view and possess the sacred relic even
for a short time. Indeed Philadelphia would be
only too glad to send it, for since the bell has
already helped by its travels to lessen the sec
tional feelings between the north and south, so it
would help unite the citizens of our republic who1
live on the Atlantic seaboard with those who live
on the Pacific.
Little do either sections realize how intimately
the bell is connected with the consummation of
our nation, early political ideals and with the
fondest of its impulses in Colonial days. This old
bronze relic not only helped to proclaim Inde
pendence, but for years before 1776 rang loud to
celebrate the hopes of the people and rang low
to intone their woes!
Upon its sides Is this inscription:
"And proclaim liberty throughout all the land
unto all the inhabitants thereof ."-Lev. 25, 10. A
strange Providence indeed wrote that Inscription
on its crown many years before its throbbing
clangors and melodious eloquence had aught at
all to do with liberty!
Announcing proclamations of war and treaties
of peace; welcoming the arrival and bidding God
speed to departing notables; proclaiming some
accession of the English royal family tothe
throne and the secession therefrom of the Ameri
can colonies! Its more customary use, however,
was to call the members of the assembly of Penn
sylvania together at the morning and afternoon
sessions and to announce the opening of the
courts. . 1
Despite the fact that the Liberty Bell is one
of the most treasured of national relics, it is not
originally an American product, but a foreign im
portation; and imported from England, too, where
it was first cast according to the order given in
October, 1751, by the superintendents ofthe state
house of the Province of Pennsylvania now Inde
pendence Hall.
Thomas Lester of White Chapel, London, cast
the bell, and by August, 1752, it arrived in Phila
delphia and was erected on trusses in the state
house yard. While being tolled and tested early
in September of the same year it was cracked by
the clapper, though by no unusually powerful
stroke. Concerning this accident, Isaac Morris
wrote, March 10, 1753:
"Though the news of our new bell cracking is
not very agreeable to us, we concluded to send it
back by Captain Budden." who had brought it from
London last August, but he could not take it on
board, upon which two ingenious workmen under
took to cast it here,' and I am just now informed
they have this day opened the mould and have
got a good bell, which, I confess, pleases me very
much, that we should first venture upon and suc
ceed in the greatest bell cast, for aught I know,
in English America. The mould was finished in
a very masterly manner, and the letters, I am
told, are better than (on) the old one. When we
broke up the metal our judges here generally
agreed it was too high and brittle, and cast sev
eral little bells out of it to try the sound and
strength, and fixed upon a mixture of an ounce
and a half of copper to the pound of the old bell,
and in this proportion we now have It."
Herman Pass, from the Island of Malta, and
Jacob Stow, a son of Charles Stow, the doorkeep
er of the assembly, were the two ingenious work
men referred to in the above letter. After the
second casting of the bell it was again hung and
tested in the spring of 1753. More defects were
soon found, however. The American casters,
Pass and Stow, who were not bell founders by
trade at all, had put too much copper in the metal
so that its sound was Impaired. Disappointed
with that failure and also nettled at the gibes of
their townsmen concerning it, they asked permis
sion to cast the bell a second time. Thomas Les
ter, the original maker of it, also offered his
services, but the authorities decided to allow
Pass and Stow to proceed again, and thus the
third and present casting was made, and again
the bell was raised; this time in the state house
steeple Itself. That operation was completed by
'the end of August of 1753,. when the American
casters were paid 60 13s. 5d. for their labors.
Then began its chimes, August 27, 1753, when
it called the assembly together, ringing out the
old, ringing in the new; sounding Its melodies for
innumerable public and private events during
more than four-score of years.
The firBt Individual for whom it rang was Frank
lin; sent "home to England" to ask redress for
tfce grievances of thfc colonies in February, 1757.
The bell echoed the hopes of the people's hearts
and its melodious "Bon Voyage" sounded over the
Delaware as he sailed away.
When the planing and splitting mills were
closed and the manufacture of Iron and steel prod
ucts was prohibited by acts of parliament in
Pennsylvania and the king's arrow was affixed
upon pine trees and the trade of the colonies in
all parts of the world restrained, the bell was
again tolled to assemble the people in the state
house yard to protest against such outrages.
Thus did the bell, long before the Revolution,
become the beloved symbol of truth and freedom,
reinforcing with pugnacious and violent peals, the
cry of determined citizens, in the largest political
meeting held up to that time in the state house
yard, that none of the ship "Polly's detestable
tea," that had just been brought into , the port,
should be funneled down their throats with par
liament duty mixed with it."
When the port of Boston was closed in May,
1774, and the heart of the country was growing
heavier with its affliction, the bell was once more
carefully muffled and tolled in a solemn and pro
phetic manner, both to announce the closing of
the port and, a little later, to call a meeting to
relieve suffering in Boston on account of the
restriction of its trade.
As the conflict with England approached the
bell was rung more and more; its use became a
matter of course, and then, on April 25, 1775,
just after the reports came to Philadelphia of the
Battle of Lexington, it rang wildly to assemble
8,000 people in the state house yard and to in
spire their souls to a resolution pledging their
all to the cause of liberty.
It rang also to assemble the Continental con
gress to its daily sessions, both at Carpenter's
hall and Independence hall, and, finally, its crown
ing achievement, the one wild, defiant and joyful
ringing that, more than all the previous reverbera
tions it made, gave it the sacred name of "The
Liberty Bell," occurred on July 8 (and not the
4th, as is generally believed), after the Declara
tion of Independence had been adopted.
This greatest of its jubilees called the citizens
together in the yard to hear read in the stentorian
tones of John Nixon the first public proclamation
of the Declaration, and never did the old wooden
rafters of the state house steeple rock and trem
ble with more sympathetic vibration than at this
time.
When returned to the old state house steeple
again one of its first uses was to ring upon the
announcement of the surrender of Lord Cornwal
11s, in October, 1781, and in the following month
to toll in welcoming Washington to the city. A
year and a half later it helped to proclaim the
treaty of peace with Great Britain, and in Decem
ber, 1799, it was muffled for the first time in many
years, though not to mourn for lost liberty or
over tyrannical deeds, but to lend its almost
hushed music to tie funeral solemnities of Wash
ington himself.
"T;Kr ff f I SHOULD
Motor Trucks Displacing Mules in Army Service
menta that must be carried with an
army division of 20,000 men is 2.S83,
000 pound3, or a full load for 961 of
such army wagons as are now used. -
"These figures in road space alone
show that there Is a great waste with
present methods. That number of
wagons require a space of approxi
mately eleven miles on a twenty-yard
road, a column that is vastly too large
to be economically bandied. And, be
sides, with eleven miles of wagons
occupying the roads, there is no space
left, unless it is before or behind the
column, for the troops.
"With mule and wagon transporta
tion the troops are confined to a
movement of only tbout 24 miles per
day, for this is the limit of distance
which mules or horses can cover in
a day without injury.
"With truck transportation this
handicap Is entirely eliminated. Not
only can the supplies be moved with
one-half to four-fifths fewer vehicles
for a motor truck will carry from two
to five times as large a load as a
mule wagon thereby working a great
economy in road space, but the truck
can travel at a vastly greater speed
than the men. Where three to five
miles an hour is considered good
speed for a heavily laden mule wag
on, the truck can travel at the rate of
ten to twenty miles an hour, and can
keep it up twenty-four hours a day
if necessary without tiring."
WASHINGTON. "The motor truck
is bound to mark the passing
of the army mule, just as it has begun
to oust that animal's shorter-eared
half-brother, the horse, from the trans
portation scheme of civil life," said an
army officer on his return from an ex
tended European tour. "It is only a
matter of a short time before that
picturesque and faithful adjunct of
our military force Is relegated to the
much more prosaic life of the farm.
"What has been and is being ac
complished by European govern
ments in the matter of army trans
portation can be accomplished in our
own country. And abroad the motor
truck Is being put to every conceiv
able test as to its fitness and capa
bility in military maneuvers.
"The possibilities of the truck In
our own army schemes are made evi
dent in the report recently made by
high army officials to the war depart
ment. According to this report the
total weight of supplies and impedi-
William F. FslcCombs Is Very Partial to Big Men
WILLIAM F. M'COMBS, the Demo
cratic national chairman, has a
decided penchant for the society of
men of mountainous build. He him
self does not tip the beam at even wel
terweight figures, but he lives with
men of the white hope caliber when it
comes to size and strength. When
he was an undergraduate at Prince
ton his tastes were decidedly literary.
McCombs, when it came to the club
elections, took an election to the
"foot ball club," as one of the lead
ing clubs there is accurately de
scribed, and among his intimates In
his class were such old football stars
as "Garry" Cochran, "Ad" Kelly, "Bill"
Bannard and "Sport" Armstrong.
When McCombs left Princeton to en
ter the Harvard Law school none of
his athletic friends went up to Cam
bridge with him. He solved the prob
lem by living through his three years'
course with the man who had
broken all the strength records of Harvard.
His new chum was Henry F. Coch-
ems, who had come to Harvard with
the reputation of being one of the
best football stars in the west. Coch
ems had played four years in the Uni
versity of Wisconsin backfleld, and
was ineligible, but he would have
proved a tower of strength to the
Crimson.
I AM VFRX
FOND OF
After McCombs went to New York
to establish himself in law he natu
rally looked around for another strong
man to share his apartment. He
found him in Big Bill Edwards, now
the street commissioner of New
York, who was a freshman at Prince
ton when McCombs was a junior. Ac
cording to Tom Reed's definition that
no man is a gentleman who weighs
over 200 pounds, that New York apart
ment housed a gentleman in the per
son of McCombs.
Edwards refereed the big football
games for years with great success un
til one day, when Pennsylvania was
playing the Indians, a facetious under
graduate sang out:
"Hey, Bill Edwards, get off the field
so we can see the game!"
Next to big men, McCombs is equal
ly fond of big cigars, the thick black
ones that "Uncle Joe" Cannon made
famous.
An Interesting Grove of Venerable Oak Trees
IF you are interested in lofty,
broad, noble and venerable oaks the
writer will point ' you to a stately
grove.
In going eastward along the Bunker
Hill road turn " to the right at the
crossing of Queen's Chapel road and
near midway between the Bunker Hill
road and Rhode Island avenue you will
see on the left of the way the oak
grove indicated. Under the boughs
of the great trees is a frame house
with flower beds and flower-planted
tubs in front and on the sides. The
writer's first idea was that some grand
mansion must once have stood in that
grove of high oaks, but this idea, like
so many other first ideas, proved on
investigation, to be wrong.
The present happy tenants of that
cot among the oaks are Mr. and Mrs.
Christopher Columbus Murphy. Mr.
Murphy is seventy-one years old, son
of Thomas Murphy, was born within
300 yards of where he lives today, and
his life's experience has been con
fined to that pretty and romantic sec
tion of the District.
Mr. Murphy said that when he was
a little boy the land around there be
longed to John Hoover and then to
Walter Scott. Much of it later passed
into the possession of John Britton,
who kept a store on Seventh street,
and a little later it passed to John B.
KIbbs, who subdivided the big tract
into small holdings. The Murphy place
three generations ago belonged to To
bias Talbert and the Murphy house
was built about 50 years ago by a
man remembered as Knight.
"All this country was grown over
with oak trees like those," continued
Mr. Murphy, "and the grove of 20 is
about all that remains of the wide
forest."
It is worth a trip out that way to
see the kind of timber that once cov
ered the wooded sections of the Dis
trict of Columbia. The Murphys con
structed a rustic bench under one of
the big trees. It was built so long
ago that it is a very old bench now.
When this reaches print it may be
that these old oaks will be in leaf,
and if you pass that way you should
take a reBt in the shade of the glori
ous trees.
Here Is a Man Who Eats Sand for All His Ills
THE national capital boasts at least
one sand eating man. His name
is Julian Emmons suid he is a door
keeper at the house of representa
tives. Emmons hails from Nobles
vllle, Ind., and came to Washington
with the Democratic regime in the
bouse more than two years ago. He
is sixty-five years of age, hale and
hearty.
Emmons swallows a teaspoonful of
sand after each meal He never
leaves home in the morning without
a phial of coarse sand. He says he
was troubled constantly with sour
stomach, heartburn, indigestion and
kindred ills until he started the "sand
cure." Now he asserts that he Is
never troubled at all, relishes his
food, sleeps like a baby and enjoys
life to the full.
He has one remedy for all ills. It
Cf) . m
(fhi
THIS 5Ai0
CREAT
1 r
9 j. oiutr
itX 1 TH
is sand. If a dark brown taste is
present upon arising in the morning,
do not fail to reach for the sand bot
tle. ,
He urges coarse sand, not too
sharp, and forswears the fine wbita
variety because, he says, it dissolves
in the intestinal processes and is of
no value as an aid to the functions cf
digestion.