FITCH 



2191 



FITZGERALD 



as the college. Each boarder is required to 

 give one period a day to some manual work on 

 the property. In 1914 there were forty-three 

 instructors and 513 students, 206 of whom were 

 in the college. The school has an annual in- 

 come of about $60,000 from endowment and 

 tuition. 



FITCH, CLYDE [WILLIAM] (1865-1909), an 

 American playwright and author, born in New 

 York and educated at Amherst College, where 

 he was graduated in 1886. He was a prolific 

 writer and is credited with the authorship of 

 more theatrical productions than were ever 

 written by any other American. His work 

 sometimes showed the effects of haste, but it 

 was brilliant and distinctive. His first play, 

 Beau Brummel, was brought out by Richard 

 Mansfield in 1890, and was enthusiastically re- 

 ceived. He was the author of a surprisingly 

 large number of plays, including The Climbers, 

 The Way of the World, The Girl and the 

 Judge, The Moth and the Flame and The 

 Girl with the Green Eyes. He also adapted 

 many plays from the French and German, 

 including Sapho and The Masked Ball. 



FITCH, JOHN (1743-1798), an American 

 inventor whose life was a long struggle to 

 impress people with the idea that steam power 

 could be used to run a boat. He was born 

 in Connecticut, and after working at many 

 trades was appointed deputy surveyor of Ken- 

 tucky. In making a map of the northwest 

 regions of the United States the belief was 

 forced upon him that the streams might be 

 navigated by steam. He tried to sell his map 

 to obtain money for experiments, but failed, 

 so he appealed to several state legislatures for 

 help. They refused, but he formed a com- 

 pany and built a small, though crude, steam- 

 boat. In 1787 his steam packet made a trial 

 trip down the Delaware at the rate of three 

 miles an hour. The boat Fitch invented used 

 paddles like oars, and was impracticable for 

 general commercial purposes. Had he applied 

 the power to a paddle-wheel, he, instead of 

 Fulton, would have been given the honor of 

 inventing the steamboat. Fitch was given ex- 

 clusive rights to steam navigation in New Jer- 

 sey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and in 1790 

 he built a boat to carry passengers. There 

 was not enough money to finance this venture, 

 so he went to France to introduce his inven- 

 tion. Failing in this, he returned to Kentucky, 

 disappointed and poverty-stricken, and com- 

 mitted suicide two years later. See SHIP; 

 FULTON, ROBERT. 



FITCH 'BURG, MASS., the county seat of 

 Worcester County, is a manufacturing city. It 

 is in the northern part of the state, fifty miles 

 northwest of Boston and twenty-eight miles 

 north of Worcester, on a branch of the Nashua 

 River. The city is served by the Boston & 

 Maine, and the New York, New Haven & 

 Hartford railroads and electric interurban lines. 

 The population, which in 1910 was 37,826, was 

 estimated to be 41,781 by the Census Bureau 

 in 1916. About 10,000 of this number are 

 French, and there is also a large Finnish pop- 

 ulation. The area of the city is twenty-eight 

 square miles. 



Fitchburg has an attractive location in the 

 river valley and upon gently-sloping wooded 

 hills. It has the Fitchburg state normal school, 

 a Federal building, courthouse, state armory, 

 Y. M. C. A. building, public library, the Bur- 

 bank Public Hospital, Whalom Sanitorium, and 

 homes for old ladies, working women and 

 children. Coggshall is the largest of eleven 

 parks. In the Upper Common are fountains 

 of granite and bronze, and the city has a sol- 

 diers' monument, erected in 1874. The facto- 

 ries of Fitchburg employ 9,000 people. Impor- 

 tant industries include extensive manufactures 

 of revolvers and shotguns, paper, saws, ma- 

 chine knives, steam boilers, turned-wood nov- 

 elties, axle grease, machinery, ginghams, screen 

 plates, steam engines, steam pumps and ma- 

 chinists' tools. 



Fitchburg was settled in 1719 and was a part 

 of Lunenburg until 1764, in which year it was 

 incorporated. It became a city in 1872 and 

 includes the villages of West Fitchburg, South 

 Fitchburg and Cleghorn. as. 



FITZGERALD, EDWARD (1809-1883), an Eng- 

 lish translator and scholar, was born in Suf- 

 folk and educated in Trinity College. He was 

 a recluse of extraordinary modesty, and it was 

 only through the influence of friends such 

 as Tennyson, Lowell, Thackeray and other 

 noted men of letters that any of his work was 

 given to the public. His fame rests almost 

 entirely upon his translation of the Rubaiyat 

 of Omar Khayyam. While he took great lib- 

 erties with the original text of the Rubaiyat, 

 aiming less at the exactitude than at the 

 poetry of the author's thought, the result is 

 a piece of exquisite workmanship justifying 

 Edmund Gosse's definition, "coral building in 

 literature." It is considered the standard 

 among . many excellent translations of the 

 famous Persian poem, and is beginning to be 

 recognized by the public not as Persian 



