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BEBGERAC 493 BERIBEBI first Socialist to be elected a represent- ative. He was re-elected to successive Congresses, including the 66th. He had in the meantime, however, been indicted, tried, and found guilty of sedition and disloyalty under the Espionage Act, in January, 1919. In February of the same year he was sentenced to twenty years in the Federal Prison. He ap- gealed, however, and was released on ail. By a vote in the House of Repre- sentatives he was denied his seat. In spite of attempts to defeat him by a co- alition of Democrats and Republicans, he was again elected representative in the special election, and was again denied a seat. Conviction reversed, January, 1921. BERGERAC (berzh-rac') , a town in the French department of Dordogne, on the Dordogne, 60 miles E. of Bordeaux by rail. Most of its inhabitants are em- ployed in the surrounding iron works and paper mills. The wines of the dis- trict, both white and red, are esteemed. During the wars with the English, Ber- gerac was a fortress and an entrepot of trade; but after siding with the Calvin- ists, and, consequently, suffering greatly in the religious wars, the place was dis- mantled by Louis XIII. in 1621, while the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove many of its citizens into exile. Pop. about 17,000. BERGERAC, SAVINIEN CYRANO DE, a French author, born in Paris in 1619, distinguished for his courage, and for the number of his duels, more than a thousand, most of them fought on ac- count of his monstrously lai'ge nose. He died in 1655. His writings, which are often crude, but full of invention, vigor, and wit, include a tragedy, "Agrippina," and a comedy, "The Pedant Tricked," from which Corneille and Moliere have freely borrowed ideas; and his "Comical History of the States and Empires of the Sun and the Moon." He was made the hero of a drama bearing his name, written by Edmond Rostand. BERGH, HENRY, an American hu- manitarian, born in 1820, in New York City. He was educated at Columbia Uni- versity and for a time served in the dip- lomatic service as Secretary of Legation at St. Petersburg. He resigned from the service on account of ill health. He became interested in the treatment of domestic animals and succeeded in 1866, in the face of great opposition, in in- corporating the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. jpc continued to agitate for the passage of laws to protect animals and by 1886 such laws had been adopted in 39 States of the Union and in other countries. He also founded the Society for the Preven- tion of Cruelty to Children. He wrote many plays and a volume of tales and sketches. He died in 1888. BERGSON, HENRI LOUIS, a French philosopher, bom in Paris in 1859. He was educated in the public schools of that city, graduating in 1881 from the Ecole Normal. Following some years of teaching he was appointed to the chair of philosophy in the College de France. In the following year he was elected to the Institute and was elected a member HENRI LOUIS BERGSON of the Academy of 1914. He delivered in 1913 a series of lectures in Columbia University and at the same time received the degree of Litt. D. from that institu- tion. His writings became widely popu- lar and many of them wei'e translated into English. Among these were "Time and Free Will," "Matter and Memory," "Laughter," "Creative Evolution," "An Introduction to Metaphysics." BERHAMPUR, the name of two In- dian towns: (1) A town and military station in the N. E. portion of Madras presidency, the headquarters of Gan- jam district, with a trade in sugar and manufactures of silks. Pop. about 30,000. (2) A municipal town and the administrative headquai-ters of Mur- Shidabad district, Bengal. It was the scene of the first overt act of mutiny in 1857. Pop. about 25,000. BERIBERI, BERIBERIA, BERRI- BERRI, or BARBIERS, an acute dis- ease characterized by oppression oi