Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 01.djvu/466

LEFT BACK BIVER 376 BACON As the grand object of the game consists in bringing around your men into your own inner table, all throws that con- tribute toward that end, and prevent your adversary from doing the same, are advantageous, and vice versa. Each party plays into one of the tables on his own side; thus, if black plays into his left hand table, white plays into his right (i e., that which is exactly opposite) and vice versa, their men advancing in contraposition to each other. For right of first play each party throws a single die; he who throws the highest number wins, and may, if he chooses, adopt and play the joint number of the preliminary throw. BACK RIVER, a name for the Great Fish River of northern Canada, discov- ered by Capt. Back in 1834 and by him traced down to its mouth under great dif- ficulties. BACKUS, TRUMAN JAY, an Ameri- can educator, born in Milan, N. Y., Feb. 11, 1842; was graduated at the Univer- sity of Rochester in 1864; and became President of the Packer Collegiate Insti- tute in Brooklyn, N. Y. His publications include "Great English Writers," "Out- lines of English Literature," and a re- vised edition of Shaw's "History of Eng- lish Literature." He died March 24, 1908. BACOLOR (bak'o-lor), a town in the island of Luzon, Philippine Islands; 30 miles N. W. of Manila; was the capital of the Philippines during the British in- vasion in 1762, when the Spaniards feared a bombardment and seizure of Manila; and was a scene of military activity in the American operations against the Filipino insurgents in 1899. Pop. about 15,000. BACON, a word applied to the sides of a pig which have been cured or pre- served by salting with salt and saltpeter and afterward drying with or without wood smoke. The nitrogenous, or flesh forming, matter in bacon is small, one pound of bacon yielding less than one ounce of dry, muscular substance, while the amount of carbon compounds, or heat givers, is large, exceeding 60 per cent. BACON, FRANCIS, English philoso- pher and statesman, born Jan. 22, 1561; youngest of eight children of Sir Nich- olas Bacon, Lord Keeper. His mother, whom he resembled, was the sister of Lady Burghley and a woman of fine edu- cation and strong character. In his twelfth year Francis entered Trinity College, Cambridge, but left in June, 1576, to begin the study of law at Gray's Inn. Three months later he went to France in the entourage of Sir Amyas Paulet, the representative of the English Government. Here he laid the founda- FRANCIS BACON tion of his interest in matters of state. The death of his father left him in pov- erty, with his own way to make. In 1582 he was again at Gray's Inn. He entered Parliament in 1584, and wrote a letter to the Queen in which he urged strong repression of the Catholic party and foresaw the conflict with Spain. His chief interest, however, was in the field of learning. He had previously ex- pressed dislike for the university course, dominated by scholastic methods that prevented either additions to knowledge or fit training for the service of the state. In 1592 he wrote the famous letter to Burghley in which he said that he had taken all learning to be his prov- ince and laid down the foundations on which all his later work was to be based: "industrious observation, grounded con- clusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries," that is, a method of re- search capable of immediate application to life in the place of repetition of theo- ries traditional for centuries. In 1597 he issued a slender volume of "Essays," which he described as "certain brief notes set down rather significantly than curiously." Later editions, each time with considerable additions, ap- peared in 1612 and in 1625. The ten essays of the first edition are written in simple and concise style, and are ap- plications of common sense to everyday problems. The volume of 1612, with twenty-nine additions, is on loftier sub- jects, such as Goodness, Beauty, Empire, Death, the Greatness of Kingdoms.