Naturalization: The process by which an alien acquires citizenship. A naturalized citizen in the United States has all the rights except that he cannot become president or vice-president. By the law of 1906, every alien, on his arrival in the United States is registered, and certificate of registration given him in case he should desire to apply for citizenship. No less than two nor more than seven years after filing this declaration the alien must make petition to a competent court, rehearsing these facts, stating that he is not an anarchist, and that he wishes to be naturalized. He must have two credible witnesses, citizens themselves, who confirm his statement, assert that he has been a resident of the United States for five years and of the state for one, and that he is of good moral character. The petitioner must be able to speak English unless he is naturally dumb, or has a homestead entry on public land. Foreign Africans can be naturalized but not Chinese.

New Surgery: This promises remarkable achievements in the future–even “sight to the blind” and “new life to the heart.” An enumeration of some of the feats already accomplished include: insanity cured, due to neuralgic pain by trephining the skull and taking out the “fifth” nerve; criminals restored to normal life by relieving a certain pressure on the brain: “new” bones formed by transplanting dead or living bones to living bodies; whole joints removed and others put in new places; kidneys transplanted from one animal to another; skin transplanted from the body of one person to another; skin removed from dead or living bodies kept “alive” in the laboratory by chemical means and made to grow; broken backs mended, skulls repaired with bones from some other parts of the body, new faces made, dead nerves supplemented with nerves of animals, useless lungs, kidneys, spleens and stomachs removed; injured hearts, livers and other organs stitched; paralysis and brain failure cured by draining the spine or brain, brittle arteries reinforced with gold wire. By means of electric bulbs and mirrors the interior of the throat and lungs is examined. The New Surgery also provides measures for the amelioration not only of the individual condition, as in the removal of the tonsils and the appendix to prevent serious dangers, but also for the actual betterment of the race itself by the prevention through simple surgical means, of the production of offspring by criminals, as well as by others, who might transmit hereditary physical or other defects. The Rentoul operation for severing the tube conveying the seminal fluid of the male, one that involves merely nominal risk, has been adopted in regard to criminals in this country as, for instance, in Connecticut, and might be adopted by those who, afflicted with hereditary troubles, yet also appreciate the dire effects of tainted heredity upon the race generally. Real relief would come by the instruction of children, in family and school, in the nature of the human body, and the terrible results of vice.

New York City: The greatest city of America and the second greatest of the world. It was founded by the Dutch on Manhattan Island (1613) with a few trading huts. Regular colonization began in 1622. New Amsterdam, as it was called, passed into English hands and became New York (1664), but the Dutch policy of patroonships, or large land holdings with tenant farmers, kept town and colony behind New England and Pennsylvania, until after the Revolution, when the genius of Hamilton, the Clintons, Morris and Livingston laid the foundation for its unparalleled prosperity. Its peculiarity of narrowness and immense length, of crowded population and high land values, developed by unbounded wealth and the possibilities of modern steel construction, have produced on Manhattan Island a new architecture, with towering office buildings and palatial apartment houses, ten to fifty stories high. They darken the densely crowded streets, but have a strange and startling effect of grandeur. Cathedrals and pyramids dwindle at their side. Nowhere is the terrible force of modern civilization so impressed on the daily unconscious thought of man by his inherent necessities. It is a gorgeous, crashing, magic city, robbed of weirdness and grotesqueness by the skill of a modern school of architects, whose variety in design, color and decoration, added to modern resources in building-stone, tinted brick and concrete, never wearies the eye and produces a skyline of impressive splendor. The communications and transportation of the thronging myriads are effected by every device of subway, elevated roads, electric and cable lines; organized ability and achievement, aided by the acquired good sense and good nature of a people accustomed from childhood to its imperial wonders.

Nose: The organ of smell, so placed above the mouth that the odor of whatever is placed therein must be immediately perceived.

Nostalgia: A longing for the old home and friends which in sensitive natures produces melancholia and even death. It appears to be most frequent among mountaineers, including the Swiss, Trolese, Norwegians and Dalmatians.

•Taken from the 1912 Standard Illustrated Book of Facts.

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Marriage: In law, a civil contract establishing the status of a man and a woman united in lawful wedlock; the relation of husband and wife. In its ethical sense, it is, in all Christian countries, a mutual compact, based on regard and affection, to live together as husband and wife, until death. Its purpose is to perpetuate the family and the race, to preserve moral and social purity, and to properly rear the young. The marriageable age is especially regulated by statute in the various States; under the common law it is 14 years in the male, and 12 in the female.

Mixed Races: The subject of mixed races is intimately connected with the study of both ethnology and atavism. It involves a consideration of the phenomena attendant upon the sexual union of individuals belonging to different varieties of the human race. Two phases of mixing of races are particularly interesting to North Americans, the result of the mixing of white and negro blood, and the amalgamation of various white races, belonging to every strata of society, from the descendants of generations of oppressed peasants, to scions of high nobility in what has been termed the “American Melting Pot.” The mingling of European nations seems to produce a strong and thoughtful race, combining the finest elements of those who are, from the struggle to emigrate, the best physical specimens of their people, and now the United States is increasing the difficulty of admission, thus aiding the natural principle of selection. The result of amalgamation among more distant races, as exemplified in the population of Central and Southern America and the Eurasians of India, have not commended themselves to the American mind, and there is a strong opposition to the admission of Chinese and Japanese, the finest of non-Caucasian races.

Morgue: Originally a prison court for the identification of prisoners in France, then applied to a building on the Seine behind the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, where the bodies of the drowned and other unknown dead are exposed for identification and police inspection. This practice is now usual in all large cities. The period of exposure is usually 72 hours, and the unidentified bodies are then buried by the city or given to anatomists. To avoid morbid curiosity, only adults with an interest in identification are admitted, and a careful record is preserved of physical appearance and peculiarities.

Moving Pictures: About 1903 the stock of films in existence had gradually become sufficiently numerous to enable the establishment of small theaters with frequent changes of views. They became very popular and by 1905 had driven the traveling exhibitors of moving pictures practically out of business. There are now upwards of 10,000 such theaters in the United States alone, and they are proportionately numerous all over the civilized world. Receipts of such theaters range from $200 to $5,000 weekly according to size and location. Over fifty reels (lengths of 1,000 feet) are now produced weekly so that one person could spend two or three hours daily and never see a repeated picture. The business of the ordinary theater has been seriously affected, and the lower class of melodramas has been entirely eliminated. Moving pictures are of course liable to great abuse, as vulgar and vicious films have sensational interest, but the manufacturers have voluntarily submitted their products to a respectable censorship, and they have become the best, cheapest and most instructive amusement. In its far-reaching effects, the invention of moving pictures is one of the greatest in the history of science.

Murder: The crime of killing a human being with malice aforethought; an idiot is irresponsible; an infant under fourteen goes to the reformatory. Killing in hot-blooded quarrel without premeditation is manslaughter, punishable with imprisonment, not death; and killing in self-defense, or when a house is broken into at night is justifiable. But if a man shoots at one and kills another, or kills, even in self-defense, when caught in burglary, it is murder. Intoxication is not an excuse, nor provocation, when it does not give absolute necessity of self-defense. Most American states punish murder by death, but a mawkishness of juries, and the technicalities of evidence and specialist arguments for insanity of criminals often defeat justice. European practice is stricter.

•Taken from the 1912 Standard Illustrated Book of Facts.

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