Malleability of Gold [pp. 239]

MALLEABILITY OF GOLD.
In this city are five newspaper establishments: the Appeal, Avalanche, Bulletin,
Eagle Enquirer and the Ledger, whose editors are scholars and obliging
gentlemen.
The chartered banks in Memphis are: Bank of Tennessee, Planters' Bank,
Bank of West Tennessee, Union Bank, Commercial Bank, Southern Bank, Bank
of Memphis, River Bank, and the Gayoso Savings Bank. The old banks of
Tennessee are selling exchange to-day at par, thereby making their notes worth
one half per cent. more than coin.
There are three insurance companies on sound principles.
In this city are three first-class hotels: The Gayoso House, the Worsham
House, and the Commercial House.
My present abode is at the first, whose proprietor, D. Cockrell, Esq., is well
known throughout the United States, for comfortable accommodations and
good fare. This magnificent establishment, situated on Shelby street, has a
faqade of two hundred and twenty-six feet fronting the Mississippi river, of
which a splendid panoramic view is presented for miles above and below. The
main entrance to the building is through the office on Shelby street, and fitted
up on the most improved plan. Every facility for the convenience of guests is
here fully established, and the proprietor being in regular communication with
all railroad offices and steamboats, receives information of any change in their
arrivals or departures immediately upon their being issued; also attached is a
reading room, furnished with all the daily and weekly papers. The building is
four stories high and covering one acre of ground, is furnished throughout in
the most costly style and with the best arrangement for the comfort of guests.
The Southern tourist going North or returning home will find the Gayoso
House a charming place of sojourn. Large, well-ventilated rooms, spacious
halls and corridors, saloons and a table supplied with the luxuries of every
clime, will be appreciated by those who travel for business or pleasure. I most
heartily recommend it to the travelling public for a liberal patronage.
Memphis at last has dropped her swaddling clothes and donned the dress of
riper years. One by one, her baby cottages are giving way, and mansions of a
sterner mold rising in their stead. The old frame shanties are disappearing
fast, while brick and mortar walls, iron-bound and fireproof, are rearing their
giant sides aloft. The veil is raised, and greatness, strength, and beauty, is the
aspect of her brow.
Progress, well pleased, appears, and whispers softly in her ears-On! onward!!
on!!! Very truly yours,
G. H. STUECKRATH.
3.-MALLEABILITY OF GOLD.
GOLD is so malleable that it may be beaten into leaves of which 280,000
would be but an inch thick, and so tenacious that wire but the thirteenth part
of an inch in diameter will suspend one hundred and fifty pounds. Gold is too
soft to be used pure, and to harden it it is alloyed with copper or silver. In its
pure state, gold bullion is considered as twenty-four carats, and then it is sold
by the number of carets of pure gold, and gold of twenty-two carets is that
used in our coin, two parts of which are copper. Gold plate is about eighteen
carets or one fourth copper.
The hundred-thousandth part of a grain of gold may be seen by the naked eye,
and,a cube of gold whose side is but a hundredth part of an inch, has 2,433,000,000
visible parts. A cylinder of silver covered with gold leaf may be drawn
out three hundred and fifty miles long, and yet the gold will cover it.
Gold leaf can be reduced to the three-hundred-thousandth part of an inch,
and gilding to the ten-millionth. Silver leaf to the one-hundred-and-seventy
thousandth. The specific gravities are 193 to 195.
Lace gilding is the millionth of an inch thick; gold leaf the two-hundredthousandth. Platina wire may be the five-hundred-thousandth of an inch.
Five hundred inches of gold wire has been drawn from a grain. Tin-foil is the
one thousandth of an inch; that is two hundred gold leaves are only equal in
thickness to one of tin-foil.
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