454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



couth the other ! We hear two men discourse the one with elegance, 

 precision, style, the other with hesitation, blundering, rudeness. We 

 say, how accomplished the one, how uncouth the other ! In all these 

 cases, muscular force has played its equal part with mental aptitude, 

 or inaptitude. We see a man who has not been educated to grace of 

 manner, or speech, or thought, assuming the part of a man of grace, 

 manner, and thought, and, by much study, sustaining the character 

 for a short time, as on the stage. But we know that man only acts ; 

 he is not trained to the muscular skill that can carry him through all 

 parts of life with equal grace, though he may, by intense labor, attain 

 a minor part, and be perfect in it. 



We know that no one who late in life enters a vocation requiring 

 certain qualities, like that of a physician, a surgeon, a preacher or 

 pleader, a commander, a pilot, an engineer, a player, can gain that 

 full self-possession which comes, as it is said, naturally, to the man 

 who has been from early life trained in the work. Here again the 

 failure we affirm is muscular as much as mental. The concealed mus- 

 cular mechanism is not in working order. The mind may issue its 

 commands, but, if the muscles fail to obey, the mind, like a general 

 whose red-coats are undrilled and impervious, may break itself to im- 

 becility and produce no results beyond hopeless and helpless confusion 

 and dismay. 



So we contend for the physical education of all our young, on the 

 lines I have laid down, as the stirring want in this stirring time. Our 

 intention is to make this nation a nation of heroes as well as scholars ; 

 a nation that the sculptor can describe as well as the historian ; a 

 nation that can hold its own in the scale of vitality, and protect its 

 own by the virtues of courage, physical prowess, and endurance, as 

 ably as by statesmanship and knowledge, more ably than by expedi- 

 ency and craft. 



-*- 



ACOUSTIC ABCHITECTUKE. 



By WILLIAM W. JACQUES, Ph. D., 



LATE FELLOW IN PHYSICS OF THE JOHKS HOPKINS TJNIVEESITY. 



IN the construction of a building in which large numbers of people 

 are to be gathered together to listen to music or speaking, it is 

 highly important to consider the conditions which shall best allow the 

 sound to be carried from the musician or speaker to all of the hearers. 

 It is the aim of the present article to place before the reader an outline 

 of the art of so constructing buildings, and to present certain general 

 principles upon which acoustic success depends. 



The subject divides itself naturally into three parts. In the first is 

 considered the effect of the condition of the air within an auditorium 



