EMBARGO 



2020 



EMBROIDERY 



found at Saqqara in his pyramid, perfectly pre- 

 served after forty-five centuries. The Egyp- 

 tians used three processes, according to Herod- 

 otus, the ancient historian. The first, which 

 was very complicated, was the most expensive 

 and was used only by the very wealthy people. 

 The second, a cheaper method, consisted in 

 injecting cedar oil into the abdomen and 

 steeping the body for seventy days in a solu- 

 tion of caustic soda. The contents of the 

 abdomen were then allowed to escape and the 

 body was ready for burial. The cheapest 

 method, which was employed by the poor, was 

 simply to place the body in natron for seventy 

 days, after rinsing the abdomen with a com- 

 pound called syrmaea. 



Kings and members of the royal family had 

 beautiful tombs, such as the great Pyramids 

 at Gizeh. In 1871 an Arab discovered a large 

 tomb at Der El-Bahari filled with coffins 

 heaped one on another. Many royal persons 

 were found to be in the collection, among them 

 Rameses II, whose features were again shown 

 to the world after 3,200 years. B.C. 



EMBAR'GO. In international law an em- 

 bargo is an order forbidding ships in a port to 

 put to sea A government may establish an 

 embargo to gain possession of the ships of an 

 enemy or to shut off supplies from a country 

 with which it has a disagreement but is not 

 at war. The first form, the hostile embargo, is 

 no longer practiced; instead, The Hague agree- 

 ment is observed which requires that ships in 

 an enemy port at the outbreak of hostilities 

 shall be given time to depart. The other 

 form, the civil embargo, is still permissible, 

 though uncommon 



Outside of international law the word has 

 come to mean a nation's prohibition of the 

 export of a particular commodity. Thus, at 

 the outbreak of the War of the Nations in 

 1914 England placed an embargo upon wool, 

 and in 1916 there was an effort made to estab- 

 lish an American embargo upon foodstuffs, to 

 reduce prices by keeping agricultural products 

 in the country. Congress refused to consider 

 the question. 



Embargo Act. On December 22, 1807, in 

 Jefferson's administration, the United States, 

 exasperated by the repeated aggressions of 

 Great Britain and France, forbade its ships to 

 carry goods to foreign countries. It was 

 thought that the offending powers would suffer 

 if deprived of American commodites, but in- 

 stead, the suffering was at home. New Eng- 

 land, the center of foreign trade, was most 



severely affected and discontent there became 

 so widespread that Congress repealed the em- 

 bargo in February, 1809. It was succeeded by 

 the Non-Intercourse Act (which see). 



EMBEZZLEMENT, embez"lment, the dis- 

 honest appropriation of property by a servant, 

 clerk or agent through his position of trust. 

 Embezzlement is distinguished from larceny 

 by the fact that in the former case the property 

 is already in the hands of the thief as a trust 

 and he appropriates it to his own uses. The 

 offense is a crime in all states and provinces, 

 and is punishable by imprisonment, usually for 

 a term not less than five years. 



EMBOSSING, embaws'ing, the art of pro- 

 ducing raised figures upon plain surfaces, such 

 as leather, paper, wood or metal. It was the 

 earliest form of metallic ornamentation, and 

 is usually employed for delicate or costly 

 works, although a cheaper method has been 

 adopted by forcing thin sheets of metal into 

 dies. When a raised pattern is produced by 

 blows or pressure upon sheet-metal, leather, 

 cloth, paper, gutta-percha, etc., it is said to be 

 embossed. Embossing of metal may be done 

 by hand by beating up the metal from the 

 under side, which method is called bossing, or 

 repousse. Writing paper and cards are em- 

 bossed with two dies a steel die and a coun- 

 ter-die, the latter being formed of millboard or 

 leather, faced with gutta-percha. The paper or 

 card is dampened, and a lever-press is gen- 

 erally used to fix the impression. 



There is a method of embossing wood by 

 saturating it with water, in which state a red- 

 hot cast-iron mold is pressed heavily upon it. 

 By a recently invented American process, 

 veneers of wood are embossed with metal dies. 

 In needlework, embossing is done by embroid- 

 ering over figures padded with cotton or other 

 material. 



EMBROID'ERY, an artistic form of needle- 

 work, the fashioning of ornamental designs on 

 cloth or other materials. The possibilities of 

 embroidery have been known and appreciated 

 from the earliest historic times, and it is to-day 

 one of the most popular of the domestic arts. 

 Something of its scope is expressed in the fol- 

 lowing lines from a poem by John Taylor, an 

 obscure English writer of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury: 

 Flowers, plants and fishes, birds, beasts, flies 



and bees, 

 Hills, dales, plains, pastures, skies, seas, rivers, 



trees, 



There's nothing: near at hand, or farthest sought, 

 But with the needle may be shaped and wrought. 



