ICE 



2902 



ICE 



drama, The League oj Youth, hits at political 

 parties of Norway and is a travesty on the re- 

 ligious shamming of the day. His Pillars of 

 Society, A Doll's House and Ghosts were fore- 

 runners of the great woman's movement which 

 characterized the close of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. In An Enemy of the People, Ibsen ap- 

 pears as an aggressive social reformer, and with 

 satire as a weapon he wages war with a world 

 out of joint. The Wild Duck is an attempt to 

 arouse in the individual ideals for which Nature 

 never intended him. In Rosmersholm, Ibsen 

 turns from an arraignment of society in gen- 

 eral to a study of the struggles of the indi- 

 vidual toward the light. Hedda Gabler is a 

 portrait play of a worthless, idle woman. The 

 Master Builder brings a message of encourage- 

 ment to the great army of workers of the 

 world who earnestly and honestly strive. Lit- 

 tle Eyolf is a tragedy of a guilty conscience. 

 John Gabriel Borkman is the story of a de- 

 faulting bank manager. When We Dead 

 Awaken reveals the tragedy of the discovery 

 that life's best gifts have been wasted in the 

 pursuit of something false and showy rather 

 than for something of enduring reality. 



Ibsen's own life story holds little of interest. 

 He was born at Skein, in South Norway, and 

 was successively director of the theater at 

 Bergen and the Norske Theater at Christiania. 

 In 1864 he left his native country, lived for 

 several years in Rome and Dresden, but re- 

 turned to Norway in 1878. Ibsen's efforts have 

 been directed toward the highest and best in 

 life. In his social dramas he gave the people 

 of his generation not what they wanted, but 

 what they needed. R.D.M. 



Consult Jaeger's Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Biog- 

 raphy ; Rose's Ibsen: Poet, Mystic and Dramatist. 



ICE, whether in natural form or artificially 

 produced, has become one of the most useful 

 commodities that civilized man has appro- 

 priated for his own needs. This substance, 

 which keeps the butter, cream and fruit in the 

 household refrigerator fresh, sweet and appetiz- 

 ing in the warmest summer weather, is water 

 reduced to solid form through the process of 

 freezing. A block of ice is a collection of 

 minute crystals, but these are not usually dis- 

 cerned because they are so regularly arranged 

 and so compactly united. If we should subject 

 a piece of ice to the effects of heat, and then 

 examine it with a lens, we would see in the 

 interior numerous tiny six-sided (hexagonal) 

 crystals that under the continued influence of 

 heat would expand into beautiful six-rayed 



stars. The crystals that are so plainly seen in 

 snowflakes are of the same form. 



Under ordinary conditions pure water freezes 

 at a temperature designated as 32 on the 

 Fahrenheit scale, and as on the Centigrade 

 scale, but ice may form at other temperatures 

 than this. The freezing point is lowered when 

 great pressure is applied to the surface of 

 water, and usually the presence of impurities 

 has a similar effect. Sea water, for instance, 

 which contains salt in solution, freezes at a 

 lower temperature than fresh water (about 27 

 F.). It is an interesting fact that while nearly 

 all substances are heavier in solid form than 

 in the liquid state, ordinary ice is lighter than 

 water and will float in it. This is due to the 

 fact that as it approaches the freezing point 

 water begins to expand, and when it freezes, it 

 expands so as to increase its volume about 

 one-ninth. This expansive force is sufficiently 

 strong to break glass and earthen pitchers and 

 to split open great rocks in the crevices of 

 which water has frozen. 



The Ice Industry. The harvesting, storing, 

 manufacture and transportation of ice consti- 

 tute an important industry, which has devel- 

 oped proportionately as ice has come into gen- 

 eral use for preserving foods and other perish- 

 able substances. This industry is divided into 

 two main branches, one connected with the 

 harvesting and distribution of natural ice, and 

 the other with the production of artificial ice. 



Natural Ice, as its name implies, is cut in 

 the winter time from ponds, rivers and lakes. 

 As a preliminary step in the process of harvest- 

 ing, the snow and whatever debris may lie on 

 the surface of the field are cleared off by 

 means of scrapers, and if there is an additional 

 layer of snow ice this is also removed. The 

 next step is to outline on the ice area the 

 blocks into which it is to be cut. This is done 

 by a machine called a marker, which is usu- 

 ally drawn by mules or by horses. This ma- 

 chine first cuts on the surface of the field a 

 series of parallel grooves about three feet apart, 

 and then outlines a second series the same 

 distance apart, which cross the first at right 

 angles. The marker is followed by a plow 

 whose cutting apparatus consists of a steel 

 bar equipped with a set of sharp knives, one 

 behind the other. The plow cuts the grooves 

 deeper, so they extend nearly through the ice, 

 and it is then an easy matter to pry the cakes 

 loose and float them to shore through channels 

 provided for the purpose. The cakes are nin 

 into the ice houses on elevators or inclined 



