ORENBURG 



4411 



ORGAN 



ous, sarcastic, and he often hits upgn the truth 

 with wonderful accuracy. 



ORENBURG, annboorK', a well-built mod- 

 era city of European Russia, capital of the gov- 

 ernment (province) of the same name, situated 

 on the Ural River, at the southern end of the 

 Ural Mountains. It is 988 miles southeast of 

 <nv. by rail. Before the Trans-Caspian 

 Railroad was built Orenburg was an important 

 center of the caravan trade with Central Asia, 

 but since the construction of the railroad a 

 large government slaughterhouse has been 

 built, and the city now exports quantities of 

 frozen meats, sausages, hams, tallow, hides, 

 skins and dairy products. Among the features 

 of interest are the arsenal, barracks, a seminary 

 for priests and several other schools, and an old 

 fortress. Population, 1910, 93,600. 



ORESTES, orcs'teez, in Greek mythology, 

 tin- son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. 

 When his father was slain by his guilty mother, 

 Orestes, then a child, was saved by his sister 

 :ra, who had him taken from the kingdom 

 and placed in the court of his uncle. Here he 

 became acquainted with Pylades, the son of 

 the king, and the two grew up to be most inti- 

 mate and faithful friends. His sister Electra 

 had taught him that he should avenge the death 

 of his father, and when finally he became of 

 age, he started out to accomplish this, accom- 

 panied always by Pylades. They pretended to 

 be messengers bearing in an urn the ashes of 

 Orestes, who they said had died, and by this 

 means obtained access to the palace and killed 

 both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, her lover. 

 For this terrible crime, the killing of his own 

 mother, the Furies pursued Orestes and drove 

 him insane. 



He wandered about, cared for by the faithful 

 I'yladps, till the oracles said that if he would 

 bring from Tauris in Scythia a famous statue 

 of Diana, he would be restored to reason. Py- 

 . thru, with his dependent friend, started 

 for Tauris, where the barbarous natives cap- 

 tun .1 tin in ami IT. pared to sacrifice them to 

 ui, as was their custom with strangers. The 

 fess of the temple was Iphigenia, a sis- 

 f Orestes, who had been carried away years 

 before by Diana, and when brother and > 

 recognized each of safety of the cap- 



- was assured. With Iphigenia's assistance 

 -tat ue was obtained and taken home by the 

 time, and thereafter Orestes reigned in peace 

 at Mvoiiae. SeelPHiCEMv 



ORGAN, awr'gan. One writer has callnl th. 

 reeds down by the river "the first infantile lisp" 



of this king of musical instruments. Probably 

 the earliest ancestor of the organ was the in- 

 strument which the ancient Greeks called Pan's 

 pipes; it was made of several hollow tubes 

 (reeds originally) of different lengths, the up- 

 per ends, across which the player blew, being 

 left open. This was in use five centuries before 

 Christ. About three centuries later Ctesibus of 

 Alexandria made an instrument in which air 

 was forced into the pipes by means of water 

 power. There are now in the Museum of Na- 

 ples two hydraulic organs excavated from the 

 ruins of Pompeii (destroyed by an eruption of 

 Vesuvius in A.D. 79), showing that this type of 

 instrument persisted for a long time. Byzan- 

 tium (Constantinople) was the first city to be- 

 come an important center of organ building, 

 and there the pneumatic organ, with the wind 

 supplied by bellows, was first used. The first 

 church organ is believed to have been installed 

 during the time of Pope Vitalian I, in the sev- 

 enth century. 



Between the fourteenth and nineteenth cen- 

 turies the Germans led the world in organ 

 building, with the Dutch following, but the 

 English came into front rank in the nineteenth 

 century. The first American organ operated by 

 electric power was used at the Centennial 

 position in 1876. There are now in North 

 America a number of magnificent organs; some 

 of the largest of these are in the Auditorium. 

 Chicago; Convention Hall. Kansas City; the 

 Roman Catholic Cathedral, Montreal: the Ca- 

 thedral of the Holy Cross, Boston; the Mormon 

 Tabernacle, Salt Lake City; and Music Hall, 

 Cincinnati. 



Structure of a Modern Organ. The sound is 

 produced by the admittance of air into sets of 

 pipes which rest upon wind chests. These wind 

 boxes are supplied with compressed air by 

 means of a number of bellows, operated in 1 

 instruments by steam or electricity. Hand 

 power is sometimes used for small organs. To 

 the upper part of each wind chest is attach* < I 

 a sound board, which is divided into as many 

 grooves as the instrument has keys. By man- 

 ipulation of the keys, valves at the lower ends 

 of the pipes are opened and air is admitted 

 into them. There are keyboards both for the 

 hands and the fret, known respectively as 

 manuals and pedals. The sound is control!. .1 

 not only by the action of the keyboards, but 

 by the manipulation of stop knobs, or slides. 

 T!i pipes are arranged on th. win. I chests in 

 ranks, or rows, each rank containing pipe* ' 

 ing the same quality of tone, and thot 



