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vanizing of criminals after execution. In 1811, at Glasgow, a noted chemist tried the effect of a voltaic "pile" of two hundred and seventy pairs of plates upon the body of a murderer. As the various parts of the nervous system were subjected to the current, the most startling results followed. whole body shuddered as with cold; one of the legs nearly kicked an attendant over; the chest heaved, and the lungs inhaled and exhaled. At one time, when all the power of the instrument was exerted, we are told that "every muscle of the countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action. Rage, horror, despair and anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expression on the murderer's face, surpassing far the wildest representations of a Fuseli or a Kean. At this period several of the spectators were obliged to leave the room from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted." The bodies of horses, oxen, and sheep were galvanized, with results the most surprising. Five men were unable to hold the leg of a horse subjected to the action of a powerful battery.

So far as we know, nothing of much importance has yet been inferred from such experiments as these. Davy and Faraday, however, and their pupils, did not confine their attention to these barren wonders. Sir Humphry Davy took the "pile" as invented by Volta, in 1800, and founded by its assistance what may be styled a new science, and developed it to the point where it became available for the arts and utilities of man. The simple and easy process by which silver and gold are decomposed, and then deposited upon metallic surfaces, is only one of many ways in which the galvanic battery ministers to our convenience and pleasure. If the reader will step into a manufactory of plated ware, he will see, in the plating-room, a trough containing a liquid resembling tea as it comes from the teapot. Avoiding scientific terms, we may say that this liquid is a solution of silver, and contains about four ounces VOL. XX. - NO. 122. 47

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of silver to a gallon of water. are also thin plates of silver hanging along the sides of the trough into the liquid. The galvanic battery which is to set this apparatus in motion is in a closet near by. The vessels to be plated, after being thoroughly cleaned and exactly weighed, are suspended in the liquid by a wire running along the top of the trough. When all is ready, the current of electricity generated by the small battery in the closet is made to pass through the trough, and along all the metallic surfaces therein contained. When this has been done, the spectator may look with all his eyes, but he cannot perceive that anything is going on. There is no bubbling, nor fizzing, nor any other noise or motion. The long row of vessels hang silently at their wire, immersed in their tea, and nobody appears to pay any attention to them. And so they continue to hang for hours, for five or six or seven hours, if the design is to produce work which will answer some other purpose than selling. All this time a most wonderful and mysterious process is going on. That gentle current of electricity, noiseless and invisible as it is, is taking the silver held in the solution, and laying it upon the surfaces of those vessels, within and without; and at the same time it is decomposing the plates of silver hanging along the sides of the trough in such a way as to keep up the strength of the solution. We cannot recover from the wonder into which the contemplation of this process threw us. There are some things which the outside and occasional observer can never be done marvelling at. For our part, we never hear the click of a telegraphic apparatus without experiencing the same spasm of astonishment as when we were first introduced to that mystery. The beautiful manner, too, in which this silvering work is done! The most delicate brush in the most sympathetic hand could not lay on the colors of the palette so evenly, nor could a crucible melt the metals into a completer oneness.

And here is the opportunity for

fraud. In five minutes an article is coated with silver in every part, inside and out; and that mere "blush" of silver, as the platers term it, will receive as brilliant a polish, and look as well (for a month) as if it were solid plate. Nay, it will look rather better; since the silver deposited by this exquisite process is perfectly pure, while the silver employed in solid ware is of the coin standard, - one tenth alloy. The plater can deposit upon his work as little silver as he chooses, either by weakening his solution, or by leaving the articles in it for a very short time; and no man can detect the cheat with certainty except by an expensive and troublesome process. Nor will it suffice for the operator to attend to the strength of his solutions, and keep his eye upon the clock. As in certain conditions of the atmosphere we can scarcely get a spark from the electrical machine, so there are times when the galvanic battery works feebly, and when the silvering goes on much more slowly than usual. To guard against

errors from this cause, there is no sure resource but a system of careful weighings. In such establishments as that of the Gorham Company of Providence, Tiffany's or Haughout's of New York, Bailey's of Philadelphia, and Bigelow Brothers and Kennard's, or Palmer and Batchelder's, of Boston, each article is weighed before it is immersed in the solution, its weight is recorded, and it is allowed to remain in the solution until it has taken on the whole of the precious metal it was designed to receive.

There was a lawsuit the other day in New York, which turned upon the quantity of silver deposited upon sundry gross of forks and spoons. The plater agreed to put upon them twelve ounces of silver to the gross, which is about as much as is ever deposited upon spoons or forks. If he had performed his contract, he would have spread over each table-spoon about as much silver as there is in a ten-cent piece; and such is the nature of silver that these spoons would have worn

well for five or six years. In fact, there are no better plated spoons yet in use than these were designed to be. The plater meant to comply with the usages of the trade. He meant to put upon those spoons the quantity of silver which, in the trade, stands for twelve ounces to the gross, which is about ten ounces to the gross. Such was probably his virtuous intention, and he supposed he had carried out that intention. But when the spoons were put to the test, it was discovered that upon one hundred and fortyfour table-spoons there were but three ounces and a half of silver. It came out on the trial that the plater never weighed his work, and trusted wholly to the length of time he left it in the solution. He appeared to be honestly indignant at the testimony showing that his spoons, which had been left four hours subject to the action of the battery, had acquired only a film of silver. To the eye of the purchaser, these spoons would have presented precisely the same appearance as the best plated ware in existence. For two or three months, or even for six months, they would have retained their brilliancy. What their appearance would have been at the end of a year or two we need not say, for most readers have encountered the spectacle in their pilgrimage through a world which is said to resemble plated articles of this quality in being "all a fleeting show."

Every one is familiar with the gold lining that is now so generally seen in silver vessels. This is laid on by the same process as that which covers the outside with silver. The vessel is filled with a solution of gold, and in this solution a thin plate of gold is suspended. The electric current being made to pass through the interior thus prepared, the liquid bubbles up like soda-water, and in three or four min utes enough gold is deposited upon the inside surface for the purpose designed. When this is accomplished, nothing remains but to polish the vessel, within and without, and we have

a piece of ware which is silver when we look at it, and golden when we drink from it.

The obstacle to the introduction of the superior plated ware now made by the Gorham Company is its costliness. The best plated ware costs five times as much as the worst, and one fourth as much as solid silver. We saw the other day three large salvers, which, at a distance of six feet, looked very nearly alike. All of them bore a most brilliant polish, and all were elaborately decorated. One of them was a trashy article, made of an alloy of lead and tin, covered with a "blush" of silver. It had been stamped out and shaped at one blow by a stamping-machine, and left in the silver solution subject to the action of the battery for perhaps fifteen minutes. It was very heavy, and when it was suspended and struck it gave forth a dull leaden sound. The price of this abomination was thirty-seven dollars and a half, and it would last, with careful occasional usage, for a year. Daily use would disclose its real quality in a few weeks. Another of these salvers was of solid silver, to which no objection could be made except that its price was nine hundred and fifty dollars. The third was of that superior plated ware introduced recently by the Gorham Company of Providence. The base of this article was the metal now called nickel silver, a mixture of copper, nickel, and zinc,- -a very hard and ringing compound, perfectly white, and capable of a high polish. Upon this hard surface as much silver had been deposited

as upon the best Sheffield plated ware, which is about as much as can be smoothly put upon it by the electroplating process. When this salver was struck, it rang like a bell, and it would not bend under the weight of a man. Such a salver, used continually, will retain its lustre for a whole generation, and when, after that long period, it begins to lose its silver coating, it can be re-silvered and made as good as ever. But the price of this article was two hundred dollars, — more than five times the cost of the leaden trash, and a fourth of the price of the solid salver. Nevertheless, plated ware of this quality is the only kind which it is good economy to buy. There are few more extravagant purchases we can make in housekeeping than lead and brass ware, covered with a film of silver so thin that one ounce of the precious metal can actually be spread over two acres of it.

One fact can easily be borne in mind: good serviceable plated articles cost, and must cost, from one fourth to one third as much as similar articles of solid silver. Anything of a much lower standard than this is trash and vulgarity.

For our part, we prefer good plated ware to solid plate. In plated ware we can now have all the beauty of form, all the brilliancy of surface, all the durability and utility of solid silver, without its excessive costliness, without appearing to be guilty of ostentation, without putting our neighbors to shame, and without offering a perpetual temptation to burglars.

such a place. Since that time we have often had similar surprises, especially in New England, where curious industries have established themselves in the most out-of-the-way nooks. In a hamlet of three or four houses and a church, we see such signs as "Melodeon Manufactory." At a town in Northern Vermont we find four hundred men busy, the year round, in making those great Fairbanks Scales, which can weigh an apple or a train of cars. There is nothing in St. Johnsbury which marks it out as the town in the universe fittest to produce huge scales for mankind. The business exists there because, forty years ago, there were three excellent heads in the place upon the shoulders of three brothers, who put those heads together, and learned how to make and how to sell scales. All over New England, industries have rooted themselves which appear to have no congruity with the places in which they are found. We heard the other day of a village in which are made every year three bushels of gold rings. We ourselves passed, some time ago, in a remarkably plain New England town, a manufactory of fine diamond jewelry. another town - Providence - there are seventy-two manufactories of common jewelry. Now what is there in the character or in the situation of this city of Roger Williams, that should have invited thither so many makers of cheap trinkets? It is a solid town, that makes little show for its great wealth, and contains less than the average number of people capable of wearing tawdry ornaments. Nevertheless, along with machine-shops of Titanic power, and cotton-mills of vast extent, we find these seventy-two manufactories of jewelry. The reason is, that, about the year 1795, one man, named Dodge, prospered in Providence by making such jewelry as the simple people of those simple old times would buy of the passing pedler. His prosperity lured others into the business, until it has grown to its present proportions, and supplies half the country with the glittering trash which we all de

In

spise upon others and love upon ourselves.

But there is something at Providence less to be expected even than seventy-two manufactories of jewelry: it is the largest manufactory of solid silver-ware in the world! In a city so elegant and refined as Providence, where wealth is so real and stable, we should naturally expect to find on the sideboards plenty of silver plate; but we were unprepared to discover there three or four hundred skilful men making silver-ware for the rest of mankind, and all in one establishment,

that of the Gorham Manufacturing Company. This is not only the largest concern of the kind in existence, but it is the most complete. Every operation of the business, from the melting of the coin out of which the ware is made, to the making of the packing-boxes in which it is conveyed to New York, takes place in this one congregation of buildings. Nor do we hesitate to say, after an attentive examination of the products of European taste, that the articles bearing the stamp of this American house are not equalled by those imported. There is a fine simplicity and boldness of outline about the forms produced here, together with an absence of useless and pointless ornament, which render them at once more pleasing and more useful than any others we have seen.

It was while going over this interesting establishment, that the raspberryjam incident recurred to us. This thing, however, is both rich and rare; and yet the wonder remains how it got there. It got there because, forty years ago, an honest man began there a business which has grown steadily to this day. It got there just as all the rooted businesses of New England got where we find them now. In the brief history of this one enterprise we may read the history of the industry of New England. Not the less, however, ought the detailed history to be written; for it would be a book full of every kind of interest and instruc

tion.

It was an honest man, we repeat, who founded this establishment. We believe there is no house of business of the first class in the world, of thirty years' standing, the success of which is not clearly traceable to its serving the public with fidelity. An old clerk of Mr. A. T. Stewart of New York informed us that, in the day of small things, many years ago, when Mr. Stewart had only a retail dry-goods store of moderate extent, one of the rules of the establishment was this: "Don't recommend goods; but never fail to point out defects." Now a man struggling with the difficulties of a new business, who lays down a rule of that nature, must be either a very honest or a very able man. He is likely to be both, for sterling ability is necessarily honest. It is not surprising, therefore, that Mr. Stewart is now the monarch of the dry-goods trade in the world; and we fully believe that the history of all lasting success would disclose a similar root of honesty. In all the businesses which have to do with the precious metals and precious stones, honesty is the prime necessity; because in them, though it is the easiest thing in the world to cheat, the cheat is always capable of being detected and proved. A great silverhouse holds itself bound to take back an article of plate made forty years ago, if it is discovered that the metal is not equal in purity to the standard of the silver coin of the country in which it was made. The entire and perfect natural honesty, therefore, of Jabez Gorham, was the direct cause of the prosperity of the house which he founded. He is now a serene and healthy man of eighty-two, long ago retired from business. He walks about the manufactory, mildly wondering at the extent to which its operations have extended. "It is grown past me," he says with a smile; "I know nothing about all this."

In the year 1805, this venerable old man was an apprentice to that Mr. Dodge who began in Providence the manufacture of ear-rings, breastpins,

and rings, the only articles made by the Providence jewellers for many years. In due time Jabez Gorham set up for himself; and he added to the list of articles the important item of watch-chains of a peculiar pattern, long known in New England as the "Gorham chain." The old gentleman gives an amusing account of the simple manner in which business was done in those days. When he had manufactured a trunkful of jewelry, he would jog away with it to Boston, where, after depositing the trunk in his room, he would go round to all the jewellers in the city to inform them of his arrival, and to say that his jewelry would be ready in his room for inspection on the following morning at ten o'clock, and not before. Before the appointed hour every jeweller in the town would be at his door; but as it was a point of honor to give them all an equal chance, no one was admitted till the clock struck, when all pushed in in a body. The jewelry was spread out on the bed, around which all the jewellers of Boston, in 1820, could gather without crowding. Each man began by placing his hat in some convenient place, and it was in his hat that he deposited the articles selected by him for purchase. When the whole stock had been transferred from the bed to the several hats, Mr. Gorham took a list of the contents of each; whereupon the jewellers packed their purchases, and carried them home. In the course of the day, the bills were made out; and the next morning Mr. Gorham went his rounds and collected the money. The business being thus happily concluded, he returned to Providence, to work uninterruptedly for another six months. In this manner, Jabez Gorham conducted business for sixteen years, before he ever thought of attempting silver-ware. Such was his reputation for scrupulous honesty, that, for many years before he left the business, none of his customers ever subjected his work to any test whatever, not even to that of a pair of scales. It is his boast, that, during the whole of his business career of more