Jam

“ The jam breakers are in the wildest excitement, cheering and hurrahing, and some may be seen out in the current of logs, jumping from one to another, or making their escape to the shore. Others on the lower part of the jam at the moment of breaking are carried down the river. Though apparently a scene of great danger, comparatively few accidents occur. The workers are cool, experienced men with steady nerves and stalwart arms, a race of men not surpassed for muscular development. ”

“ One day she was telling the little girls—they make such a noise at tea, you know—'The more noise you make, the less jam you will have, and vice versâ.' And I thought they wouldn't know what 'vice versâ' meant: so I explained it to them. I said 'If you make an infinite noise, you'll get no jam: and if you make no noise, you'll get an infinite lot of jam.' But our excellent preceptress said that wasn't a good instance. ”

“ But the British soldier never hesitated. The army slang for jam is, I believe, poz or pozzie, so jam became doopoz, and was speedily recognized by the natives under that form.
The peasants on their side have fallen into a kind of pigeon French, accompanied by a good deal of simple gesture, which, even with the most elementary [Pg 129] vocabulary, is extremely easy to understand. ”

“ By slackening the line the axe-man could be lowered to the logs; and the instant the sticks cracked under the strokes, he could leap to the “basket” and be pulled out of harm’s way, and let the jam go through under him. The idea gained favor. The following morning the end of one of the seven hundred foot lines was taken across on the jam to the ledges on the west bank. Fifty men went over with it, to handle it. With a hundred men there was no difficulty in lowering and raising it at will. When drawn taut, it hung sixty feet above the foot of the jam. ”

“ "I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!" the Queen said. "Twopence a week, and jam every other day."
Alice couldn't help laughing, as she said, "I don't want you to hire me——and I don't care for jam."
"It's very good jam," said the Queen.
"Well, I don't want any to-day, at any rate."
"You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. " The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday——but never jam to-day."
"It must come sometimes to 'jam to-day,'" Alice objected.
"No, it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every other day: to-day isn't any other day, you know." ”

“ Such an ending is also called enjambement. The importance of this distinction between "end-stopped" and "run-on" lines will appear in the notes on the Decasyllabic Couplet and Blank Verse, in Part Two.
(b) Pauses filling the time of syllables.
A second class of silent time-intervals, or pauses, is to be distinguished from the cesural pause by the fact that in this case the [Pg 20] time of the pause is counted in the metrical scheme. Pauses of this class correspond to rests in music; and as in the case of such rests, their occurrence is exceptional. ”

“ As many drops as fall into the water in a second, so many waves will in a second strike a floating piece of wood, which will be just so many times tossed up and down, and thus have a periodical motion, the period of which corresponds with the interval at which the drops fall. In like manner a sounding body, periodically moved, produces a similar periodic movement, first of the air, and then of the drum in the ear; the duration of the vibrations constituting the movement must be the same in the ear as in the sounding body. ”

“ The seconds pendulum of the clock performs one vibration in two seconds, or a half vibration in one direction per second. Take a 10-inch pendulum of a drawing-room clock, which vibrates twice as fast as the pendulum of an ordinary eight-day clock, and it gives a vibration of one per second, a full period of one per second to and fro. Now think of three vibrations per second. I can move my hand three times per second easily, and by a violent effort I can move it to and fro five times per second. With four times as great force, if I could apply it, I could move it twice five times per second. ”

“ And the movement to and from the Earth’s centre, which the cannon ball is beginning to perform, being checked by solid matter, is transformed into a rhythm of another order; namely, the vibration which the blow sends through neighbouring bodies. [15]
Rhythm is very generally not simple but compound. There are usually at work various forces, causing undulations differing in rapidity; and hence it continually happens that besides the primary rhythms there are secondary rhythms, produced by the periodic coincidence and antagonism of the primary ones. ”

“ In the case of noise the agitation of the air is an irregularly changing motion. In musical sounds, on the other hand, there is a movement of the air in a continuously regular manner, which must be caused by a similar movement in the body which gives the sound. These so-called periodical movements of the sound in the body, rising, falling and repeated at equal intervals, are called vibrations. The length of the interval elapsing between one movement and the next succeeding repetition of the same movement is called the duration of vibration (Schwingungsdauer) , or period of motion. ”

“ All that a watch actually does is to beat seconds, and to record the number of beats. Now, a string and stone, swung as a pendulum, will beat time; and a native who is taught to throw a pebble into a bag at each beat, will record it; and, for operations that do not occupy much time, he will be as good as a watch. The rate of the pendulum may be determined by taking two sets of observations, with three or four minutes' interval between them ”

“ We must find a little space for striking clocks. The simplest is one blow at each hour just to draw attention to the clock. Striking the hours and also one blow at each half hour as well as the quarter double blow, called “ting tong” quarters, are too well known to need description. The next stage after this is “chiming quarters” with three or more musical gongs, or bells. One of the best strikers I have has three trains, three weights and four bells. It strikes the hour on a large bell and two minutes after the hour it strikes it again, so as to give you another chance to count correctly. ”

“ In the simplest kind of temporal rhythm, therefore, where the beats are, say, drum-taps of equal force, the primary element is time. But if there is the added complication of drum-taps of unequal force, the element of comparative stress must be reckoned with. And if, finally, the drum-taps are not in the same key (say, on kettledrums differently tuned) , then the further element of comparative pitch must be considered as a possible point of emphasis. In a word, pitch may sometimes be substituted for stress. ”

“ As the drum-beats became more rapid the jumping was accelerated, their legs keeping time, till with the quickened music their feet became almost invisible from the rapidity of their movements, and they seemed as if boring a hole in the ground, whilst the dust rose in clouds about them. ”

“ Only the pendulum of an old clock ticks loudly and solemnly in the dining-room: one can hear the heavy, long-drawn, even breathing of the sleepers. I am just going to get up when something buzzes in my ears: suddenly there is a creaking sound, and something soft falls, and the sound spreads itself in waves along the walls of the room. ”

“ Endeavor to move your hand to and fro, in accordance with the oscillating period of the water: when you have thoroughly established synchronism, the work thrown upon the hand apparently augments the weight of the water. So likewise with our tuning-fork; when its impulses are timed to the vibrations of the column of air contained in this jar, its work is greater than when they are not so timed. ”

“ TEMPO.—This refers to the degree of motion. The musical picture is not constant, but panoramic; we never hear a piece of music all at once, but as a panorama of successive sounds. Tempo refers to the rate of speed with which the scroll passes before our minds. Thus we speak of rapid tempo (allegro, and the like) , or slow tempo (adagio) , and so forth.
BEATS.—The beats are the units in our System of Measurement,—as it were, the inches upon our yardstick of time; they are the particles of time that we mark when we "count," or that the conductor marks with the "beats" of his baton. ”

“ The jogs may be faint or strong, many or few, and for long distances the lines may run smooth and straight; bat so long as the jogs are irregular they give no clue to time Here and there, however, the even line will betray a regularly recurring indentation or undulation, reflecting a rhythm and possibly significant of a remote pendulum whose rate of vibration is known. ”

“ The 'timbre' of a note is due to its wave-form. Waves are either simple ('pendular') or compound. Thus if a tuning-fork (which gives waves nearly simple) vibrate 132 times a second, we shall hear the note c. If simultaneously a fork of 264 vibrations be struck, giving the next higher octave, c ́, the aërial movement at any time will be the algebraic sum of the movements due to both forks; whenever both drive the air one way they reinforce one another; when on the contrary the recoil of one fork coincides with the forward stroke of another, they detract from each other's effect. ”

“ Rhythm in Verse.—Professor Jakob Minor has adduced a figure, valuable in helping us to realize what poetic rhythm is, when he remarks that to strike a bell twelve times, at exactly equal intervals, is to produce what may be called, indeed, a rhythmic effect, but not to awaken anything resembling the sensation of poetical rhythm. Into the idea of poetic rhythm enters an element of life, of pulse, of a certain inequality of time based upon an equality of tone. Rhythm ceases to be poetic, rhythm if it is mechanical or lifeless. ”

“ About a century since it became known, that when two clocks are in action upon the same shelf, they will disturb each other: that the pendulum of the one will stop that of the other; and that the pendulum that was stopped will after a while resume its vibrations, and in its turn stop that of the other clock. When two clocks are placed near one another in cases very slightly fixed, or when they stand on the boards of a floor, they will affect a little each other’s pendulum. ”

“ What really passes out from the source is merely a rhythmical motion of the air particles, manifesting themselves as changes in pressure, spreading out in ever-widening spheres through the atmosphere. The order of these compressions is different for every sound. The musical sounds of an orchestra embody a different set of vibrations for each note of each particular instrument. If the fluctuations in pressure of a sound wave are irregular and non-periodic, the sound is called a noise; if they are cyclic, and follow a regular and sufficiently rapid periodic lag, the sound is musical. ”

“ In nearly all forms of chronographs in which the ballistic pendulum method is not used, the beginning and end of a period of time is recorded by means of some kind of electrically controlled mechanism; and in order that small fractions of a second may be measured, tuning-forks are employed, giving any convenient number of vibrations per second, a light style or scribing point, usually of aluminium, being attached to one of the legs of the tuning-fork. ”

“ Sound Waves. Practically everyone knows that a hammock hung with long ropes swings or vibrates more slowly [273] than one hung with short ropes, and that a stone suspended by a long string swings more slowly than one suspended by a short string. No two rocking chairs vibrate in the same way unless they are exactly alike in shape, size, and material. An object when disturbed vibrates in a manner peculiar to itself, the vibration being slow, as in the case of the long-roped swing, or quick, as in the case of the short-roped swing. ”

“ Practical skill as well as some theoretical investigation has been expended upon that part of a clock which is called the escapement, the excellence of which is essential to the correct performance of a timepiece. The pendulum must have its motion sustained by receiving an impulse at every vibration: at the same time it is desirable that the vibration should be hampered as little as possible by mechanical connection. ”

“ If the clock weight be enormously increased, the frictional retardation becomes increased relatively in a greater proportion than the drive, so that as the weight of the clock is increased the pendulum’s time of vibration is first diminished, until at last a neutral point is reached and finally the increased loading of the clock weight begins to make the time of vibration increase again. ”

“ When a Vernier pendulum, vibrating once in ·9 second, or 10 times in 9 seconds, is employed, its coincidences with the seconds pendulum of the clock may be determined to a single vibration with the greatest ease by the unassisted eye, and thus, of course, tenths of a second are readily estimated. ”

“ A sudden sound smote our ears, even in the time-car, a low thrumming sound that rose in pitch higher and higher. I could see the men on our air-boats pointing blunt-nosed metal objects toward the oncoming cars of the enemy, and abruptly the significance of it struck me, and I understood that they were using the sound-ray Kethra had mentioned. ”

“ Thus we have always at hand both a more or less efficient bodily metronome in the pulse and in respiration, and also a "cerebral metronome" capable not only of easy adjustment to different rates of speed but also of that subtlest of modulations which psychologists call the 'elastic unit,' and which musicians, though not so definitely or surely, recognize as tempo rubato.
The sense of rhythm, as has been said, differs remarkably in different individuals—just as the sense of touch, of smell, of hearing. ”

“ The pendulum swings from Summer to Winter, and then back again. The corpuscles, atoms, molecules, and all masses of matter, swing around the circle of their nature. There is no such thing as absolute rest, or cessation from movement, and all movement partakes of Rhythm. ”