The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1912. ARTIFICIAL LIGHTING.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 93, 14 December 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1912. ARTIFICIAL LIGHTING.

Artificial lighting aims at actually turning night into day, hut so far the methods of illumination in use fall a long way behind tin’s ideal. Neither gas nor electricity, with all the modern improvements in lamps, burners, and mantles that have been made, give the perfectly white light desired. Writing in the ‘Technical World,’ Mr. Hubert Franklin summarises in interesting fashion the results that have been attained. The nearest approach to the light of Die sky that has been obtained to date is made by passing a low-tension current of electricity I hrongh a tube or globe containing rarefied carbonic acid gas. A continuous luminous tube of this description is utilised to provide the lighting in some of the more up-to-date American textile mills, the tube running right around the walls of each apartment, and presenting the appearance of a narrow stripe of vivid light, so well diffused that practically no shadows are cast. In many of the public buildings of America the lighting, although carried out with the ordinary electric globes, is so arranged that none of the lights are directly visible. In churches what is known as the “bowlful of light” system is being largely adopted, a cluster of powerful lamps being hung high in a bowl which shields their direct rays irom the eye, the light being reflected from the ceilings and walls. In other buildings the lights are concealed from view behind the cornices. Scientists are investigating still, and it will not be surprising to find some great advances made before long.

FALLACIES EXPOSED.

It is said that Dickens ruined his health because be would carry out Ids mistaken theory that bal'd mental work must be counterbalanced by bard bodily work. Hence bis exhausting all-night tramps about London after long slavery at bis desk. This was one of the fallacies exposed at the Guildhall conference on the health of the business man, says a London correspondent. The City man, it seems, is too fond of rushing from the intellectual toil of office to tin 1 strenuous golf links. One doctor sail! that this is a frightful cause of neurasthenia. “It is simply draining your system and nervous energy by two taps instead of one,” he said. His idea was that the City man is misled by bis worship of muscle. The people whv go to the doctor with nervous

breakdown are often tlic most muscu-| ]ar. for there is no relation between health and the. size of the muscles. Most of the speakers preached the simple life to the City man, who unfortunately did not attend to profit by the counsel. A dead set was made on his hurried and “undietetic” lunch, and he was told to go without altogether, or at any rate, drop meat out of it. One severe doctor recommended “a poached egg on toast with a glass of Metchnikoll milk and a tew nuts.”

Was it not Newman who said a man need never starve with a few almonds in his waistcoat pocket? Everyone agreed that the City man is in a had way. The City surgeon was especially gloomy about the chemists’ shops round the big stations in the morning before business hours crowded with men buying pick-merups, and the pub-lic-houses round the Stock Exchange crowded likewise. There was general •agreement that the business man drinks too much between meals. The people who break down are not the drunkards, but the careful men who only drink whisky. An old City meichant contributed this poem as the safest guide— Early to bed, Early to rise, Never get drunk, And advertise. “Nothing like wool,” was a maxim thrown in. An expert from the Middlesex Hospital deplored the loss .ol ceremony over lunch and the consequent bolting of tough compounds. The most cheery speech whs that of a veteran citizen who put down the improvement in health to the decay oi the old English habit of doing business over drinks. Respectable firms no longer use the free drink as a smooth- ‘ er of business.

THE AUSTRALIAN PICTURES OF A POPULAR ARTIST.

The fine art feature of the December number of the' ‘Windsor Magazine’ is an article on the career and work of Mr. William Strutt, which is accompanied by sixteen reproductions from his pictures, including his charming and widely-popular “Peace,” his rendering of the passage in Isaiah, “A Little Child Shall Lead Them.” The coloured plate accompanying the article is from Mr. Strutt’s picture. “Bushrangers,” which, illustrates a phase of life in Australia, now, hap pily, a thing of the past. The episode which it represents occurred on tin St. Kilda Hoad, only a short distance from Melbourne, in October, 1852 Writing of some of the artist’s othei work, the compiler of the article says. “An almost equally interesting pic ture to ‘Black Thursday’ is Mr. Strutt’s ‘Burial of Burke,’ now on view in Melbourne-i-a picture which should certainly lie added to one ol Australia’s public galleries, since to Robert O’Hara Burke—and the men with him, Wills and King—belongs the feat of being the first Englishmen to cross the Australian continent. The enterprise, great in its achievement, disastrous in its termination, was one with which the world rang in 1862. Mi Strutt got all his details for this historical picture from the head of the relief party which found Burke’s remains and interred them. The portraits of the men concerned were all taken from life, and this large and important historical work, after fifty years of contemplation and preparation, has only recently been completed. Enticed by descriptions of the beauty of the country, Mr. Strutt, accompanied by his young wife and child, left Australia, after some three years’ residence there, for New Zealand. Here under the shadow of its highest moun tain, Mount Egmout, and in the hoai i of most beautiful scenery, he bought land and built himself a home with hh own hands. An interesting incident qf great archaeological value is at tached to Mr. Strutt’s short sojourn in New Zealand. Ho was walking through the forest one day, when his foot, sinking deep into the dead leafmould, struck upon a hard, unyielding substance, which, unearthed, proved to be a club carved out of a lump of lava from the crater of Mount Egmont. The only thing of its kind which illustrates the early occupation of the island, it is now in the keeping of the British Museum. In Now Zealand, however, Mr. Strutt made nr long sojourn, for the melancholy of his surroundings, the desolation of the forest, and the paucity of human companionship, drove him citywards again. He returned to Melbourne, where, known as the father of the art colony, the pioneer of culture, and the first trained painter, he soon gathered round him other men of like aims. He founded the first art society there, got up its first exhibitions, and was soon sought out by Australia s prominent men both to paint portraits and to teach. In 1862 ho came back to England, and lias now and for many years been established in his beautiful homo at Wadhnrst, in Sussex.”