Tweed, William Marcy
William Marcy (1823-1878), a New York politician. His father, whose trade he learned, was a chairmaker. Tweed became influential in local politics through popularity as a fireman. He served as an alderman and as a congressman, as deputy street commissioner, and as commissioner of public works. He became "boss" of Tammany. He was noted for letting corrupt contracts for paving and other city improvements. He began a courthouse to cost $250,000 and spent $8,000,000 long before it was completed. The New York police service became affiliated with crime in every form. Thieves and gamblers were protected. Tweed and his ring stole enormous sums from the public treasury. He was pushed hard by such papers as the Times, and Harper's Weekly. In 1873 he was convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary, but was set free by the higher courts. Civil suits were then instituted to recover the sums taken from the treasury. He was held in jail because unable to furnish $3,000,000 bail. Before the suit was concluded, he escaped to Cuba but was arrested and brought back. Pending his trial he died in Ludlow Street jail. Tweed's name is synonymous for dishonesty in public affairs. See Tammany; Nast , etc.
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Tweezers
The watchmaker will do well to purchase tweezers that are made of non-magnetic material, as they are no more expensive than ordinary ones of good make. Steel tweezers often become magnetized and by their use you convey the magnetism to the delicate parts of a movement. There are several makes of non-magnetic tweezers upon the market, all of which posses points of excellence. Soldering tweezers are made similar to Fig. 307, with hawk bill, for holding work while hard or soft soldering. See also Soldering Forceps.
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Twelve Tables
the name given to the earliest code of Roman law, civil, criminal, and religious, made by the decemvirs in 451-449 b. c. These, originally comprised in 10 tables, to which next year two others were added, were supposed to form the basis of all Roman law, and in Cicero's time were still committed to heart by boys at school. But they were very far from being a complete 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 prevent oppression under legal gal 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.
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Twilight
in astronomy, the faint diffused light which appears a little before sunrise, and again for some time after sunset, the amount and duration of the light varying materially in different latitudes and at different seasons. 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 number of reflected rays diminishes as the sun descends, the strength of the twilight 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 disappears. In the morning the change from darkness to light takes place in a similar manner, but in inverted order.
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Twilight Sleep
derived from the German word "dämmerschlaf," an anæsthetic employed in relieving the pain of childbirth, consisting of the hypodermic use of a combination of scopolamine and morphine in solution. It was first used by Drs. Krönig and Gauss in their private hospital in Freiburg, Baden, Germany, but attracted little attention until described in an American magazine article in 1914, after which it was tentatively used in a number of American hospitals, causing much discussion in the daily press for several months. It is now very seldom employed in this country, and was almost entirely ignored by the medical profession in European opean countries. Its superiority over chloroform was never obvious. Aside from that, the use of anesthetics in child birth is generally deprecated by modern practitioners, the mother's consciousness being required to enable her to assist in the delivery of the child through her own physical efforts.
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Twill
a term applied to any variety of textile woven in such a manner as to produce diagonal lines or ribs on the surface of the web. In plain weaving the weft threads pass under and over the warp threads in regular succession. In twill weaving a weft thread passes over one, under two, over one, under two, and so on. The second weft takes a set of warps oblique to those taken by the first weft, but passes over one, under two, exactly like the first. This process continued throughout the web makes the warp threads conspicuous in diagonal lines. The above method produces what is called two-leaf twill. If the wefts pass over one and under three warps, it results in three-leaf twill. In damask weaving eight-leaf twill is commonly employed. In satin weaving as high as twenty-four-leaf twill is employed, which gives a smooth, glossy surface. See Damask ; Weaving ; Satin
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Twin Flower
. See Linnaeus
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Twin-Spotted Quaker
a European night moth, the Tæniocampa munda. The wings are gray, with two closely approximate and very conspicuous dark spots on the disk of the fore wings. The caterpillar feeds on the oak.
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Twiss
SIR TRAVERS, an English jurist; born in London, England, March 19, 1 1809; was educated at University College, Oxford. Successively fellow and tutor of his college, a public examiner at Oxford, Professor of Political Economy at Oxford (1842-1847), and of International Law in King's College, London (1852-1855), he became in 1855 Professor of Civil Law at Oxford. In 1858 he became Chancellor of the Diocese of London, in 1862 advocate-general of the Admiralty, Queen's advocate-general in 1867, being knighted that same year. He served also on various royal commissions. He resigned all his offices in 1872, but in 1884 drew up for the Belgian King Leopold II. a constitution for the Kongo Free State, and in 1885 acted as legal adviser to the West African Conference at Berlin. Among his most important writings are "View of the Progress of Political Economy Since the 16th Century" (1847); "Lectures on International Law" (1856); "The Law of Nations" (1861); "Law of Nations in Times of War" (1863); "Monumenta Juridica: The Black Book of the Admiralty" (4 vols. 1871-1876), an edition for the Rolls series of the "England's Laws and Customs" of Henry de Bracton (6 vols. 1878- 1883), and "Belligerent Right on the High Seas" (1884). He died in London, Jan. 15, 1897.
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