Part 5

In fig. 2247. the upper sash is represented as open for ventilation; when shut, the parts of the opening-sash cover and overlap the fixed parts in such a manner as to exclude wind and water; but when ventilation is required, the arrangement of the parts which produce this is such as to enable the housekeeper to admit air to any extent. For this purpose the notched latch, _e_, is joined to a stud in the edge of the sash; a simple iron pin or stud is also fixed in the wooden frame at _s_, and the notches of the latch being made to fall upon this stud at any required distance, the requisite degree of opening is secured, and when the sash is again closed, the latch falls down parallel with, and close to, the sash. To secure the sashes when shut, the T bolt, _f_, in the middle of the meeting bars, has only to be turned one-fourth round, and the moveable sash is held fast in close contact with the other. The figures represent the window as finished up with single dressings, viz., plain deal shutters, facings, and sole, which, at a small expense, would give an air of neatness and comfort to the apartment, and promote a corresponding taste in the other parts of the cottage. Though the dimensions of the window here stated may be conceived sufficient for lighting an apartment of ordinary size, they can nevertheless be varied to suit every purpose. This may be done either by employing two such windows as above described, with a mullion of wood or stone between them, or the single window may be enlarged by one or two squares in width, or in height, or in both directions.” (_Highland Soc. Trans._, vol. xiii. p. 541.)

SUPPLY OF WATER TO NEW YORK.

(_From the Scotsman of Nov. 12, 1842._)

The New York papers of 15th October are filled with long accounts of the opening of a stupendous aqueduct of thirty-two miles, for conveying water to that city from the Croton River. The celebration of this event took place on Friday, the 14th, under the direction of the Common Council, and consisted of the largest procession of military companies and civic associations that ever took place in New York. It was between six and seven miles in length.

We omit the account which describes the time and order of the procession, the personages and bodies composing it, the forms and ceremonies gone through, the feastings, illuminations, and rejoicings, and proceed with that part of the account which is more directly to our purpose.

It appears that from 1829 up to the present time, New York was supplied with water from a tank or reservoir erected in Thirteenth street, and filled first by means of horse and afterwards by steam power. The present work was commenced in 1835, after being approved of by the people by a vote of 17,330 affirmatives to 3,960 negatives. It consists of:—

First, an artificial reservoir, called the Croton River Lake, 45 miles from the Battery—the extreme part of the city; this lake is formed by a hydraulic stone-masonry dam, with two waste weirs or aprons, for the over fall of the water, one of 87 feet and one of 180 feet, these being separated by a gate-house. The height of these waste weirs is 55 feet above the bed of the river, and 40 feet above the low water level.

The dam backs the water 5 miles, and makes a lake of an area of 400 acres, and a capacity equal to 500 millions of gallons.

The water enters a gate-house, where the quantity is regulated, before it enters the aqueduct, which is a stone structure, lined and arched with brick.

The face of the interior of the aqueduct is at the bottom an inverted arch, width 6 ft. 9 in., height 8 feet 5½ inches, area 53⅓ square feet, about large enough for an omnibus and four to pass through. The line of the aqueduct being on a regular declivity of 13¼ inches to the mile down to the Harlem River, a distance of 33 miles, it has a line of tunnels of 6841 feet, being sixteen in number, sometimes through earth and sometimes through solid rock; the deepest cut is 80 feet, and the least 25 feet. In Westchester only, the aqueduct crosses 25 streams of water, which are from 25 to 13 feet below the top of the aqueduct.

The grade line of aqueduct across the Harlem is 25 feet above tide water, and the top of the water now passes over Harlem river in one pipe of 36 inches, placed on the earthen dam made in the construction of the high bridge.

The bridge itself is now about one-third completed, and will be when finished one of the most stupendous works of the kind in the world. Its cost is estimated at one million of dollars, and its elevation is so great as not to impede the navigation of the stream. Some idea of this vast undertaking may be formed from the fact, that the excavation for one pier has been carried 34 feet below the surface of the water, and then a rock foundation not having been reached, 240 poles, from 30 to 40 feet long, were driven in for the purpose. Several piers having been already carried, by the aid of coffer-dams, from four to fifteen feet above high-water mark.

The river is 620 feet wide at water line, but the slope of the river banks adds an additional distance of 830 feet, making in all 1,480 feet.

The plan now in progress crosses the river with eight arches of 80 feet span, and on piers of 31 by 44 feet at the base, resting on the bed of the river, and 7 arches on piers on the land from the edge of the water up the two banks of the river.

The spring of one of the arches is 95 feet above the lowest foundation put down; the top of the parapet will be 149 feet from the lowest foundation. It is intended that the water shall pass over this bridge in pipes, to have it secure against the possibility of danger.

The interesting works at Clendinning Valley, being a bridge over a valley of 1,900 feet in breadth, the greatest height of the aqueduct is 50 feet from the bottom of the valley; beautiful archways are constructed for three streets, 34 feet for the carriage-way, and 10 on each side for side-walks.

Next in interest is the reservoir at Eighty-sixth Street, which might well be called the detaining or clarifying reservoir. It has two divisions, together thirty-two acres—greatest depth of water twenty-five feet, containing one hundred and fifty millions of gallons. Two lines of thirty-six inch pipes connect this with the reservoir at Fortieth-street, which has also two divisions, forming together an area of four acres—depth of water when filled thirty-six feet. From this point four and a-half miles to the Battery. Whole length of line from the Battery to the artificial lake, fifty miles. There are in this great work 55,000,000 of bricks and 700,000 cubic yards of stone-masonry.

The water in the aqueduct is regulated at the entrance gate, so as not to flow under any pressure—it has not been permitted to flow in the division near the city at a greater depth than two feet, but the works at the Croton dam required a few days back that more water should pass through the first division (the distance between Sing Sing and the Croton river), being eight miles, and it was found to pass seventy-five millions New York gallons in twenty-four hours, and that its velocity was over two miles per hour.

The Croton Lake now retains, beyond the daily river supply, in reserve, five hundred millions of gallons; and a small expense would add other immense artificial lakes to hold back an additional supply; but the necessity of this is hardly conceivable. It is estimated that the London supply, from all their companies, is but twenty-four millions of gallons, and Paris four millions only.

On the 8th of June last the superintendents went through the aqueduct (32 miles in length) on foot, and the whole being found complete, on the 22nd the water was admitted to the depth of eighteen inches. “The Croton Maid,” a small boat prepared for the purpose, and holding four persons, was then placed in the aqueduct, and navigated its entire length by some of the same party. This novel voyage was made sometimes at the depth of 75 feet below and then again 80 feet above the natural surface of the earth, at the rate of a mile in forty minutes, the velocity of the current. When four feet deep, this will probably reach two miles per hour.

On the 27th, the water was admitted into the immense receiving reservoir, in the presence of a large assemblage, including the mayor, governor, military, firemen, &c. &c. A salute of thirty-eight guns was fired, and the Croton Maid, soon making her appearance, was hailed with great enthusiasm, as the evidence that a navigable stream was now flowing into the city. The boat was then formally presented to the Fire Department, and she now lies safely moored in the distributing reservoir. To this basin the stream was admitted on the 4th day of July, amidst general and imposing demonstrations of public joy, the Temperance Societies taking a prominent part.

Since then, the water has continued to flow about two feet deep through the aqueduct, delivering into the receiving reservoir twelve millions of imperial gallons per day, and, as yet, only five or six millions in the pipes; nor has any defect been found in any section of the work.

Over twelve millions of dollars is the estimated cost of the entire work when done. From ten to twelve dollars is the rate charged per annum to families for the use of the water; its own force carries the stream into the highest stories of the most elevated buildings.

“An eminent clergyman (says the _New York Commercial Advertiser_), who has recently travelled in Europe and Asia, pronounces the Croton aqueduct the greatest work of our age, and says he has seen nothing to compare with it in all his travels. Its conception and design are worthy to form an era in history, from the utility, vastness, and simplicity of the undertaking. For centuries to come, it will stand a noble monument of the enterprise, art, and science of the present generation. No population of 300,000 ever before executed such a plan—not undertaken to mark a field of battle—nor like the vast walls of China, Rome, or of modern Paris, in preparation for defence in war. On the contrary, the Croton aqueduct regards the health, temperance, and happiness of myriads of the present generation, and of ages to come. None without seeing it can form an idea of its magnitude and importance.”

Literature.

_Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit._ Edited by “Boz.” London: Chapman and Hall.

Although it is a part of our plan, in the conduct of this Journal, to give it that varied character which shall constitute it the universal medium of instruction, information, and amusement for the class to which it is addressed, and therefore it needs no apology from us for introducing to our pages extracts from the writings of popular authors, such as those of the inimitable Dickens, yet we are impelled by a two-fold consideration to select from that source in this particular instance. That vein of withering satire in which the author has hitherto indulged in drawing out the character of Squeers, the Yorkshire school-master, is now, it seems, to flow afresh, in the delineation of Mr. Pecksniff, a Wiltshire architect. The broad dash of caricature with which he invests the portrait, is a peculiarity of the author that has no harm in it, since it is directed against a vicious practice, which deserves the strongest reprobation, and of which, as well as of the character of Pecksniff generally, it may be expected that our readers in particular will take an anxious cognizance. The very circumstance of the introduction of this worthy and his simple-minded pupil Pinch into the novel of Martin Chuzzlewit (for novel we suppose we must call it), will make us, and thousands of our class his readers, and eager expectants of the monthly issue which is to develope the workings of the miserable genius of Master Pecksniff. With this preface, we proceed with our purpose of drawing attention to the strong lights and shadows of the picture which arrests the eye of the architectural observer.

THE PARTING OF MR. PECKSNIFF AND HIS PUPIL.

“Come, Mr. Pecksniff,” he said with a smile, “don’t let there be any ill-blood between us, pray. I am sorry we have ever differed, and extremely sorry I have ever given you offence. Bear me no ill-will at parting, sir.”

“I bear,” answered Mr. Pecksniff, mildly, “no ill-will to any man on earth.”

“I told you he didn’t,” said Pinch in an under-tone; “I knew he didn’t! He always says he don’t.”

“Then you will shake hands, sir?” cried Westlock, advancing a step or two, and bespeaking Mr. Pinch’s close attention by a glance.

“Umph!” said Mr. Pecksniff, in his most winning tone.

“You will shake hands, sir?”

“No, John,” said Mr. Pecksniff, with a calmness quite ethereal; “no, I will not shake hands, John. I have forgiven you. I had already forgiven you, even before you ceased to reproach and taunt me. I have embraced you in the spirit, John, which is better than shaking hands.”

“Pinch,” said the youth, turning towards him, with a hearty disgust of his late master, “what did I tell you?”

Poor Pinch looked down uneasily at Mr. Pecksniff, whose eye was fixed upon him as it had been from the first: and looking up at the ceiling again, made no reply.

“As to your forgiveness, Mr. Pecksniff,” said the youth, “I’ll not have it upon such terms. I won’t be forgiven.”

“Won’t you, John?” retorted Mr. Pecksniff with a smile. “You must. You can’t help it. Forgiveness is a high quality; an exalted virtue far above _your_ control or influence, John. I _will_ forgive you. You cannot move me to remember any wrong you have ever done me, John.”

“Wrong!” said the other, with all the heat and impetuosity of his age. “Here’s a pretty fellow! Wrong! Wrong I have done him! He’ll not even remember the five hundred pounds he had with me under false pretences; or the seventy pounds a-year for board and lodgings that would have been dear at seventeen! Here’s a martyr!”

“Money, John,” said Mr. Pecksniff, “is the root of all evil. I grieve to see that it is already bearing evil fruit in you. But I will not remember its existence. I will not even remember the conduct of that misguided person”—and here, although he spoke like one at peace with all the world, he used an emphasis that plainly said ‘I have my eye upon the rascal now’—“that misguided person who has brought you here to-night, seeking to disturb (it is a happiness to say in vain) the heart’s repose and peace of one who would have shed his dearest blood to serve him.”

The voice of Mr. Pecksniff trembled as he spoke, and sobs were heard from his daughters. Sounds floated on the air, moreover, as if two spirit voices had exclaimed: one, “Beast!” the other, “Savage!”

“Forgiveness,” said Mr. Pecksniff, “entire and pure forgiveness is not incompatible with a wounded heart; perchance when the heart is wounded, it becomes a greater virtue. With my breast still wrung and grieved to its inmost core by the ingratitude of that person, I am proud and glad to say, that I forgive him. Nay! I beg,” cried Mr. Pecksniff, raising his voice as Pinch appeared about to speak, “I beg that individual not to offer a remark; he will truly oblige me by not uttering one word: just now. I am not sure that I am equal to the trial. In a very short space of time I shall have sufficient fortitude, I trust, to converse with him as if these events had never happened. But not,” said Mr. Pecksniff, turning round again towards the fire, and waving his hand in the direction of the door, “not now.”

“Bah!” cried John Westlock, with the utmost disgust and disdain the monosyllable is capable of expressing. “Ladies, good evening. Come, Pinch, it’s not worth thinking of. I was right and you were wrong. That’s a small matter; you’ll be wiser another time.”

So saying, he clapped that dejected companion on the shoulder, turned upon his heel, and walked out into the passage, whither poor Mr. Pinch, after lingering irresolutely in the parlour for a few seconds, expressing in his countenance the deepest mental misery and gloom, followed him. They then took up the box between them, and sallied out to meet the mail.

That fleet conveyance passed, every night, the corner of a lane at some distance; towards which point they bent their steps. For some minutes they walked along in silence, until at length young Westlock burst into a loud laugh, and at intervals into another and another. Still there was no response from his companion.

“I’ll tell you what Pinch!” he said abruptly, after another lengthened silence—“You haven’t half enough of the devil in you. Half enough! You haven’t any.”

“Well!” said Pinch with a sigh, “I don’t know, I’m sure. It’s a compliment to say so. If I haven’t, I suppose I’m all the better for it.”

“All the better!” repeated his companion tartly: “All the worse, you mean to say.”

“And yet,” said Pinch, pursuing his own thoughts and not the last remark on the part of his friend, “I must have a good deal of what you call the devil in me, too, or how could I make Pecksniff so uncomfortable? I wouldn’t have occasioned him so much distress—don’t laugh, please—for a mine of money: and Heaven knows I could find good use for it, too, John. How grieved he was!”

“_He_ grieved!” returned the other.

“Why didn’t you observe that the tears were almost starting out of his eyes!” cried Pinch. “Bless my soul, John, is it nothing to see a man moved to that extent and know one’s self to be the cause! And did you hear him say that he could have shed his blood for me?”

“Do you _want_ any blood shed for you?” returned his friend, with considerable irritation. “Does he shed any thing for you that you _do_ want? Does he shed employment for you, instruction for you, pocket-money for you? Does he shed even legs of mutton for you in a decent proportion to potatoes and garden stuff?”

“I am afraid,” said Pinch, sighing again, “that I’m a great eater: I can’t disguise from myself that I’m a great eater. Now you know that, John.”

“_You_ a great eater!” retorted his companion, with no less indignation than before. “How do you know you are?”

There appeared to be forcible matter in this inquiry, for Mr. Pinch only repeated in an under-tone that he had a strong misgiving on the subject, and that he greatly feared he was.

“Besides, whether I am or no,” he added “that has little or nothing to do with his thinking me ungrateful. John, there is scarcely a sin in the world that is in my eyes such a crying one as ingratitude; and when he taxes me with that, and believes me to be guilty of it, he makes me miserable and wretched.”

“Do you think he don’t know that?” returned the other scornfully. “But come, Pinch, before I say any more to you, just run over the reasons you have for being grateful to him at all, will you? change hands first, for the box is heavy. That’ll do. Now, go on.”

“In the first place,” said Pinch, “he took me as his pupil for much less than he asked.”

“Well,” rejoined his friend, perfectly unmoved by this instance of generosity. “What in the second place?”

“What in the second place!” cried Pinch, in a sort of desperation, “why, every thing in the second place. My poor old grandmother died happy to think she had put me with such an excellent man. I have grown up in his house, I am in his confidence, I am his assistant, he allows me a salary: when his business improves, my prospects are to improve too. All this, and a great deal more, is in the second place. And in the very prologue and preface to the first place, John, you must consider this, which nobody knows better than I: that I was born for much plainer and poorer things, that I am not a good hand at his kind of business, and have no talent for it, or indeed for any thing else but odds and ends that are of no use or service to anybody.”

He said this with so much earnestness, and in a tone so full of feeling, that his companion instinctively changed his manner as he sat down on the box (they had by this time reached the finger-post at the end of the lane); motioned him to sit down beside him; and laid his hand upon his shoulder.

“I believe you are one of the best fellows in the world,” he said, “Tom Pinch.”

“Not at all,” rejoined Tom. “If you only knew Pecksniff as well as I do, you might say it of him, indeed, and say it truly.”

“I’ll say any thing of him you like,” returned the other, “and not another word to his disparagement.”

“It’s for my sake then; not his, I am afraid,” said Pinch, shaking his head gravely.

“For whose you please, Tom, so that it does please you. Oh! He’s a famous fellow! _He_ never scraped and clawed into his pouch all your poor grandmother’s hard savings—she was a housekeeper, wasn’t she, Tom?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Pinch, nursing one of his large knees, and nodding his head: “a gentleman’s housekeeper.”

“_He_ never scraped and clawed into his pouch all her hard savings; dazzling her with prospects of your happiness and advancement, which he knew (and no man better) never would be realized! _He_ never speculated and traded on her pride in you, and her having educated you, and on her desire that you at least should live to be a gentleman. Not he, Tom!”

“No,” said Tom, looking into his friend’s face, as if he were a little doubtful of his meaning; “of course not.”

“So say I,” returned the youth, “of course he never did. _He_ didn’t take less than he had asked, because that less was all she had, and more than he expected: not he, Tom! he doesn’t keep you as his assistant because you are of any use to him; because your wonderful faith in his pretensions is of inestimable service in all his mean disputes; because your honesty reflects honesty on him; because your wandering about this little place all your spare hours, reading in ancient books and foreign tongues, gets noised abroad, even as far as Salisbury, making of him, Pecksniff, the master, a man of learning and of vast importance. _He_ gets no credit from you, Tom, not he.”

“Why, of course he don’t,” said Pinch, gazing at his friend with a more troubled aspect than before. “Pecksniff get credit from _me_! Well!”

“Don’t I say that it’s ridiculous,” rejoined the other, “even to think of such a thing?”

“Why, its madness,” said Tom.

“Madness!” returned young Westlock. “Certainly, it’s madness. Who but a madman would suppose he cares to hear it said on Sundays, that the volunteer who plays the organ in the church, and practises on summer evenings in the dark, is Mr. Pecksniff’s young man, eh, Tom? Who but a madman would suppose that it is the game of such a man as he, to have his name in everybody’s mouth, connected with the thousand useless odds and ends you do (and which, of course, he taught you), eh, Tom? Who but a madman would suppose you advertise him hereabouts, much cheaper and much better than a chalker on the walls could, eh, Tom? As well might one suppose that he doesn’t on all occasions pour out his whole heart and soul to you; that he doesn’t make you a very liberal and indeed rather extravagant allowance; or, to be more wild and monstrous still, if that be possible, as well might one suppose,” and here, at every word, he struck him lightly on the breast, “that Pecksniff traded in your nature, and that your nature was, to be timid and distrustful of yourself, and trustful of all other men, but most of all of him who least deserves it. There would be madness, Tom!”