Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 10.djvu/70

LEFT TWEED 52 TWILIGHT SLEEP and Yellowstone subjects. Samples of his work were acquired by most of the important public collections in this country. He died in 1902. In 1913 a lone exhibition of his paintings was held in New York, and an entire room was devoted to his work at the Panama Pacific Exposition, San Francisco. TWEED, a river of Scotland, which rises in the S. part of Peeblesshire, passes by or near to Peebles, Melrose, Kelso, Coldstream, from near which place it forms the boundary line between England and Scotland for 16 miles, runs through England for a short distance, and then enters the North Sea at Berwick; total length, 97 miles. Its tributaries include the Ettrick, Gala, Leader, Teviot, Eden, and Till. Its waters abound with sal- mon and trout, and its name is cele- brated in connection with some of the best literature of Scotland. TWEED, a cloth, so called from the name of the river which falls into the sea at Berwick, where it is largely manufactured. It is said, however, that some cloth called on an invoice tweels, or tweeled, that is, woven diagonally, hav- ing been sent to London, the word, which was blotted or imperfectly written, was misread Tweed, and as the cloth was manufactured in the valley of the Tweed, and the designation tweed was conse- quently an appropriate one, it was al- lowed to stand, even after the error had been detected. TWEED, WILLIAM MARCY, an American politician; born in New York City, April 3, 1823; began life as a chair- maker; became an alderman; was in Congress in 1853-1855; was chairman of the board of supervisors of New York City in 1856, and school commissioner in 1856-1857. He was twice sent to the State Senate, and in 1870 was appointed commissioner of public works for the city. He had previously been chairman of the general committee of Tammany Hall and grand sachem. As head of the "Tweed Ring," composed of influential and unscrupulous politicians, he suc- ceeded in obtaining control of the funds of the city government and distributed almost unlimited patronage to his friends. He was brought to trial in 1873; convicted on no less than 12 charges of fraud; and was sent to the penitentiary for 12 years. A reversal of his sentence was obtained in 1875, but he was again imprisoned for lack of bail on a series of civil suits. He broke jail and escaped to Spain, but was captured, sent back to New York on a warship, and recommitted to Ludlow street jail, where he died, April 12, 1878. TWELVE TABLES, the name given to the earliest code of Roman law, civil, criminal, and religious, made by the de- cemvirs in 451-449 B. C. These, originally comprised in 10 tables, to which next year two others were added, were sup- posed to form the basis of all Roman law, and in Cicero's time were still com- mitted to heart by boys at school. But they were very far from being a com- plete system. The occasion for them arose in the constant complaints made by plebeians of oppression by patricians; and the principal aim of the tables was to define rights, fix penalties, and pre- vent oppression under legal forms. Some of them were based on Greek models; most of them were derived from earlier Roman legislation. Many older laws were left intact by them, and reappear in Justinian's code. To the original tables commentaries were from time to time added. TWILIGHT, in astronomy, the faint diffused light which appears a little be- fore sunrise, and again for some time after sunset, the amount and duration of the light varying materially in different latitudes and at different sea- sons. Popularly, the term is only applied to the evening twilight, the morning twilight being called dawn. Twilight is produced by the diffused reflection of light from and among the atmosphere after the direct rays of the sun have ceased to reach the earth. When the sun descends below the horizon, its rays pass through the atmosphere strata, and some of them are reflected toward the earth and illuminate its surface. At first the light, falling on the lowest and densest strata, is reflected in great abundance, but as the sun descends to a greater distance below the horizon, the rays fall on higher, and therefore rarer, atmospheric strata. Consequently fewer rays undergo reflection, and as the num- ber of reflected rays diminishes as the sun descends, the strength of the twi- light diminishes in the same proportion, till at last the solar rays fall on strata so rare as to be incapable of reflecting light, and the twilight accordingly dis- appears. In the morning the change from darkness to light takes place in a similar manner, but in inverted order. TWILIGHT SLEEP, derived from the German word "dammerschlaf," an an- esthetic employed in relieving the pain of childbirth, consisting of the hypoder- mic use of a combination of scopolamine and morphine in solution. It was first used by Drs. Kronig and Gauss in their private hospital in Freiburg, Baden, Ger- many, but attracted little attention until described in an American magazine