while to-day, on these same quiet waters, and under these same noble arches, are enacted the gay scenes of the regattas and aquatic sports of rival Universities. In the Palladian' bridge of Wilton House, Wiltonshire, we have a fine example of the many beautiful bridges that adorn private estates in England, a class in which utility and engineering skill are secondary to beauty and the artistic and architectural reach their height. It is a gruesome change from the thought of bridges as works of art to that of the Pagan custom of building living human beings into the masonry of the structure, and yet evidence has been found in the records and reconstruction of some of the oldest and most famous bridges of the Old World that in their original erection this barbarous practice was followed. "Walled in" and "broken down" are phrases that occur in early accounts of certain bridges, and are said to refer to this custom. This inhuman method of walling living people into the stonework is supposed to have been practiced for the purpose of insuring permanence to the bridges, and the old song, "London Bridge is Broken Down," indicates that the earlier structures of this bridge were built in this man ner. Accidents, too, form a chapter of unpleasant reading on the subject of bridges. The frightful disasters of the Tay in Scotland and Ashtabula in the United States are still freshly and painfully remembered, and many others of less terrible consequences darken the annals of bridge history. But these calamities are confined almost wholly to railroad traffic and are fortunately growing more and more infrequent with the advance of scientific skill in their construction. Military bridges constitute an interesting and separate division in the history of bridges and the art of their construction, but these have been largely temporary and with little of the scientific and picturesque connected with them, and we are now more concerned with bridges which indicate the spread of peaceful traffic and happy travel among prosperous peoples, and which represent the higher values and progress of the scientific and artistic in this world-old art. And in nothing perhaps, more than in her bridges, is the advance of these two factors in the Old World more distinctly illustrated. It is a development that indicates the triumph of the artistic over the commercial, and attests a growing taste in the people for the beautiful, even in the common necessities of practical civilization, which is encouraging and in keeping with the other phases of development that mark modern progress. In America the engineering side. of bridge-building has received much attention and made rapid progress. Some of the greatest feats of engineering and scientific skill in the history of the art have been accomplished in the erection of some of the American bridges. But the development of the artistic and picturesque in this field is only beginning in the New World, its chief illustrations being found in the bridges erected at the great expositions in Chicago and Buffalo, and in the numerous beautiful and smaller ones in the many park systems of the United States. had not well started until iron began to be extensively used as a building material and was therefore early employed in the erection of bridges instead of stone, thus depriving the country of the beauty and grace of the stone arch which is so common in the older bridges of the Old World. Two unique specimens of the bridge building art in America are of much interest and worthy of mention: these are the old floating bridge at Lynn, Massachusetts and the black walnut bridge over Pine Creek in Warren County, Indiana. The former of these was built in 1802 and is said to be the only structure of its kind in existence. It was built because it was supposed the pond which it crosses was practically bottomless, and it was only in recent years that soundings proved that a modern bridge could be built, which was done, and the floating one discarded, though still greatly prized as a local curiosity. It was "H side. originally five and one-half feet thick, but it has been so many times repaired with three-inch planks that its thickness is now seventeen feet, and the entire structure is so waterlogged that a light team passing over it causes it to sink below the water's surface. It is 511 feet in length, and was built in three sections, floated into place, and secured. The second of these unusual bridges is built entirely of black walnut and is the most expensive wooden bridge in the state of Indiana, and probably in the United States. No one seems to know just when it was built, but it was certainly over a half century ago, and at the time when black walnut was abundant in that region. It is from 150 to 200 feet in length, and the timber alone in it is worth from twelve to fifteen thousand dollars. Lumber dealers have repeatedly tried to get possession of it, and bridge companies have offered to replace it with an iron structure, taking the timber in payment. A Fifty Years' Wrestle By MAUDE E. SMITH HYMERS ULLO, pardner! Hed a Jack Hargreave looked up from a fruitless tinkering with his automobile, and smiled. "Looks like it," he assented cheerfully. "I've been taking lessons in driving a motor car for the last three weeks and thought I could manage the thing, but something has gone wrong and I can't fix it." "A little off its feed, mebbe," suggested the old man whimsically. "Perhaps," said Hargreave goodhumoredly. "Anyhow, it has balked, leaving me stranded here, half-way between my destination and my starting point." "There's no tamin' them things, I guess," remarked the old man sagely. "Always more or less of a wrastle with 'em, same's there is with a mortgage. A horse, now, or even a mule, if you treat 'em well an' speak kind to 'em, after a while they'll git to know ye an' act like they appreciated it; but ortomobiles an' mortgages are the soullessest |