THE ELEVATOR. A Ticklish Test at the Eiffel Tower.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 395, 21 August 1889, Page 6

THE ELEVATOR. A Ticklish Test at the Eiffel Tower.

The most fastidious critic might be nob only content, but astonisfipd, with the marvellous efficiency of the Otis lift afc the Eiffel Tower in the Paris Exhibition^ an apparatus which has juat been successfully subjected to what may be considered an extraordinary test of strength and security. -One -morning recently M. Connamin, Inspecting Engineer ot the Exposition,' in the presence of M. Salles, another engineer ; of Miv Brown, of the American firm of Otis ; and of M. Eiffel himself, made a final and heroic experiment with the great lift in the interior of the Tower before handing ib over for public use. The machine, which consists of two compartj ments one above the other, weighs eleven thousand kilogrammes, and it \ras handicapped with three thousand additional kilogrammes weight of lead. This enormous aggregate of - ponderosity, being raised to a considerable height from the ground, was slung to ordinary ropes and detached from the cables of steel wire with which it is to be worked. Tho question to be solved was whether, when the ropes were cut and the lift allowed to fall, the brakes would woik properly, and arrest the descent of the lift. Two carpenters armed with heavy axes ascended to the lift and stood in readiness to cut the cables at a signal to be given by Mr Brown. Naturally anxious, M. EiQol asked the American engineer if ho felt any alarm, to which, with characteristic coolness, the representative of the Otis firm replied chat only one of two things could happen. Fortunately, it was the right issue that came about. At the signal of ' One, two, three,' the ropes were cut at a single blow, and the immense apparatus began to descend. Soon it fell with less rapidity ; it swayed for a moment from left to right, stuck on the brake, and stopped. The intense curiosity of the spectators was succeeded by a burst of cheering. Nob so much as a pane of glass in the sides of the lift had been broken or even cracked. It was as though some irresistibly powerful hand had gripped the lift in its descent and held it fast, so that it halted almost without a shock at a height of about twenty yards from the ground. The countless thousands' of 'persons' who may be expected to avail themselves of the Eiflel Lift during the Exhibition will thus be entitled to cherish the comfortable conviction that, even in tho event of the wire cable giving way, the brakes will be sufficient to arrest the downward progress of the vast machine. Strangely enough, the lift, modern as ib is in connection with dwelling-houses, has already furnished the theme for a very ghastly ghost story. The tale recites that there is a certain ancestral castle in Scotland, which, as most students of the uncanny are aware, has for many generations been supposed to be haunted. Not very long ago an English gentleman was a guest at this casble of gruesome renown. He was asked on the morning of his arrival how he had passed the night. H replied that he hod slept very badly, and that he continually heard a noise as of wheels crunching the gravel on the carriage-drive without. Ho looked from the window, bub saw nothing. The noise of wheels, he subsequently explained, was equally audible on the second night of his stay : but on the third night, a bright moonlight one, on looking from the casement, he saw — or imagined that he saw — a long funeral procession sweeping round the carriage - drive over and over again. There was a hearse-and-six, the driver of which wore a very broad-brimmed hat slouched over his eyes. At the third round of the cortege, as the hearse passed beneath the guest's window, the* driver raised his hat, and, looking upwards, revealed the countenance of a man, with a sallow complexion, bushy black eyebrows, clean shaven, bub very blue about the jaws, and with a great purple scar transversely marking his left cheek. The next day the guest made haste to get away from the ancestral castle, which was held to be haunted. He went for a tour in Italy, and alighted one day at a very old hotel in a very ancient Italian town, the landlord of which ' albergo, 1 determined to move with the times, had fitted up for the convenience of his British and American patrons a bi-and-new hydraulic lift. Shortly after his arrival the guest had occasion to ring the bell. The summons was answered by an Italian waiter, a man with a sallow complexion, bushy black eyebrows, clean shaven, but very blue about the maxillary region, and with a great livid scar stretching across his left cheek. No sooner did this individual set eyes on the guest than, uttering a hideous yell, he lied from the room. A few moments afterwards an appalling crash was heard outside. Tho ropes of the hydraulic lift were found to have given way, the lift descended with dreadful rapidity to the bottom of the shaft, and there the sallowfaced waiter with the scar was found dead, and with every bone in his body dislocated by the concussion. Not the slightest explanation has ever been vouchsafed for this extraordinary yarn. Why the waiter, if he were a waiter, should have gone to Scotland to drive a hearse on a moonlight night; where he got that scar on his cheek ; why he should have yelled so hideously when he saw the traveller at the Italian hotel ; and why the ropes should have snapped without the slightest notice of their intention so to do — all these are mysteries that have never been unravelled. Besides, the laws of poetic justice are violently outraged in the story. It is the guest who should have been killed in the lift and not the ghost— if it were a ghost.

It may fairly be admitted that temperance agitation, seconded by better education, has exercised an important influenco upon social custom, which has ro .much, to do with the' formation of habit ; but the mildness of the climate andan abundant food supply are two powerful factors in mitigating the causes that . produce drunkenness. There is very little reason to fear that these colonies will become ! notorious for intemperance with regard to I liquor." Their proclivities towards immoral indulgence are .more apt to take the form ot gambling and sexual vice, the evils which beset countries similar in climate and the condition of their people. Close observers of colonial comI munities will, wo believe, agree that the tendencies in these directions are already predominant, more especially in the older colonies of the Australian Continent. The extreme to which gambling has become prevalent—not merely on the racecourse, bub as an attachment to sports which are in themselves in the highest degree commendable as a means of developing the physique of our race—will ero long demand legislative interference. Although we prefer the morality which springs from precept to that which results from the terrors of the law,, we believe that unless gambling in connection with athletic sports is discountenanced by the clubs and the owners of grounds under whose auspices such sports are held, , some measures will h^ave to, be adopted by the Government to protect , youths ■ from , the demoralising influences of this sqrdid passion,' and to preserve the wholesome purity/ of our national 1 games. " ; Auckland. Star,",