Newspaper Page Text
PECK'S BAD BOY WITH THE CIKCUS By HON. GEORGE W. PECK Author of "Peck's Bad Boy Abroad," Etc. (Copyright by J. B. Bowles.) Ik* Bttd Boy Feeds the Menagerie Scotch Snuff—Pa Gets Mauled by the Sneezing Animals—Pa Takes a Midnight Bide on a Mule to Es cape Punishment. Well, I spose I have done it, now, and it would not surprise me to be killed and fed to wild animals. The manager of the show was talking to pa and me, be fore we left New York, about the condi tion of the show. Its finances were all balled up on account of settling with people who pretended to be injured when the tent blew down at Poughkeep sie, and the hands and performers are kicking because we area month behind, on salaries, and they get drunk when ever any jay will buy for them. Every body gives passes to everybody that wants to get in the show, so the box office man has a sinecure, and people chase us from town to town for money for board, and hay,'and everything. All through New Jersey we showed to claim agents and creditors, and didn't take in money enough to buy meat for the animals. He said the animals had all taken cold, and lay around dormant, and didn't take any interest in the busi ness, and the manager told pa he must think of something to wake the animals up. Pa said he would leave it to me to wake 'em up, and get some ginger into them. I told pa if I had five dollars to spend I could make every animal jump like a box car. Pa gave me the money, and I went and bought five pounds of Scotch snuff, and divided itupintoounce packages, and started during the after noon performance at Wilmington, Del., to wake up the animals. There Is something peculiar about animals, if you try to give them any thing that they think you want them to take, you can't drive it down them with a pile driver, but if you try to hide some thing whex-e they can reach it, they watch you out of one eye, and when you go away they look at you as much as to say: "O, you think you are smart, don't you?" Then they will go and dig it up, and play with it, and eat it if they want to. I took my first package of snuff to the lion's cage* and he was the sickest and most disgusted looking lion you ever saw, acting like a man who has taken a severe cold, and wants* to kill anybody that looks at him. The lion lay on the straw, stretched out full length, paying no attention to the crowd that passed his cage, and acting as though he wanted a hot whisky and his feet soaked in mustard water. When he was not look ing I hid the package of snuff under the straw, and rattled the straw a little, and he opened his eyes and looked at me as much as to say: "You can't fool old Shadrack, for I am on to you." I walked away behind the hyena cage, and Mr. Lion got up and stretched himself, and walked to the place where I put the pa per of snuff, put his foot on it and broke the paper, and then he put his" nose down and sniffed a sniff that drew the whole of the snuff up into his nose and lungj, and insldcs generally. Gee, but you never saw such a change In a lion. The crowd of visitors were right near his cage, when he sniffed, and when he got the snuff into him, he began to heave his sides like a man who is pre paring to sneeze, caught his breath a few times, and let out a sneeze that sounded like the explosion of an auto mobile tire. It threw cut feed all over the audience, and everybody ran away, yelling that the lion had busted. He kept on sneezing, and looking so astounded, as though he couldn't make out what had got into him. Pa heard the commotion and came running up to the cage to find out what ailed the lion. After I had gone around to the other cages and put snuff in all of them, I came up to the lion's cage. The lion had stopped sneezing and was roaring and jumping up and down, with his mouth open, trying to catch his breath, like a man who has taken too big a dose of fresh horse-radish. Pa said: "What you been doing to_ Shadrack?" I told pa I had woke Shadrack up, and that in about a minute he would find that the whole animal kingdom had got a bellyful, and would join in the chorus. Pa tried to soothe the lion by going up to the cage and stroking his mane, but the lion looked cross-eyed and stopped prancing and gave a sneeze right at pa, which blew pa clear across the tent to where the sacred cow had just got hers. When the stuff began to work on that cow it was simply scandalous, 'cause she bellowed and cried and sneezed all at once, and pawed pa. He got up and told me I was overdoing this waking up act on the animals. By that time the cage of hyenas began to sneeze a quartette, and fight each other, and the atmosphere about their The Lion Sneezed and Blew Pa Clear Across the Tent. cage was full of hair and language that would be much like cussing if it could be translated into English. Pa tried to quiet the crowd and silence the hyenas by taking an iron bar and nlauling them, but the hyenas just backed up against the rear of the cage and howled and sneezed at pa, and dared him to come on. One of them caught him by the shirt sleeve and tore pa's shirt off and eat it Pa was a sight, with no shirt on, and he ought to have gone to the dressing room and slicked, but just then the camels and the giraffes, who had inhaled their snuff, began to sneeze and beg to be killed, and pa had to go over there and quiet them. A camel is the solemnest looking beast on earth when he tries to be good natured, but when he is sick and mad, and full of snuff, he is a fiend. One such c^mel is enough for a man to handle, but when 14 camels are all sneezing at once, and trying to locate the person that is responsible for their Pa Bode Out of Town and Bode All Night. trouble, it is the safest to keep away, and when pa went in amongst them, with no shirt on, and the Arab keepers had run away in fright, it was a dangerous thing to do. But pa is brave even to rashness. He went up to Mahomet, the double humped leader of the herd, who was the leader of the sneezers, and kicked him in the slats and tpld him to hush up his noise. He clubbed him on the humps with a tent stake. Then there was a rebellion in Egypt, and Mahomet bit pa, and wouldn't let go, and the other camels sneezed all over pa, and had him down, walking on him with their padded feet. The circus hands had to pull pa out, and it wasn't so' bad, because the crowd remained and they thought it was a part of the show, and that the ani mals, were trained to sneeze fhat way. The worst case Was the hippopotamus. He was so big, and had such big nos trils, that I laid about half a pound of snuff on the side of his tank, and-when he snuffed it up his nose he got it all. 1 heard a howl from the tank and I knew the hippo was getting ready to sneeze. and I told pa to come on, 'cause Yessu Tlous was going to erupt. Pa came on the run,, just as lie was, and then the worst happened. I think the hippo went under water when he found the sneeze was coming, for just as pa got to the tank the water flew into the air likev a torpedo had exploded un der a battleship, and the hippo had sneezed all right, and pa and the audi ence which had followed him were drenched and deafened by the explosion. The hippo had blown the water all out of his tank, and he lay at the bottom, on his side, sneezing little sneezes not louder than the report of a six-pound cannon, and panting for breath. Then he raised his head, got up on his feet, and opened his mouth like a gash cut in a steer by a cow catcher of an engine, and he yawned, and I guess he got the lockjaw, 'cause he kept his mouth open all the afternoon, to get the air, like a soprano singer in a choir, who has been fed* a cayenne pepper lozenger by the tenor, just before she gets up to sing: "A Charge to Keep, I Have." We went around and inspected the sneezing animals, with the manager, and he complimented me by saying I had saved the show from becoming an ag gregation of stuffed animals, only fit for a taxidermist studio, and made every animal show that he had ginger in him. He wanted me to try my snuff cure on the performers and freaks, 'cause they were getting to be dead ones. Well, before the day was over at Wil mington, Del., pa was scared worse than he ever was in all his life before. The state of Delaware is the only state that punishes criminals by tying them up and whipping them on the bare back with a cat-'o-nine-tails, and all our men had been warned to be good while they were in Delaware, 'cause if they committed any crime there was no pow er on earth that could save them from being publicly horsewhipped. Pa him self impressed it on the men to look out that they didn't get into any trouble. Gee, but the fear of a public whipping makes men good. Twenty years ago some hold-up men from New York robbed a bank in Dela ware, and were caught, and given 50 lashes apiece on the bare back, by a big negro, and there has never been a bur glary in Delaware since. We thought we would play a joke on pa, so the man ager told pa that constables were look ing for him to arrest him for cruelty to animals, for kicking a camel in the stomach, and hitting the camel with an iron bar, and that if pa didn't want to be publicly horsewhipped on the bare back^e better skip out for Washington, D. C., where we would show in a couple of days, and wait for .us. Pa was so frightened he couldn't get supper, and everybody talked about cats of nine tails, and how prisoners were cut to pieces, and every time pa saw a jay with a slouch hat he thought it was a constable after him. After dark he put on an old suit of clothes and said he was going to Washington. They told him if he went to take a train he would surely be arrested at the depot, so "pa put a saddle on one of the mules, and rode out of town and rode all night, and all the next day he bought oats of farm ers to be delivered at Wilmington for the circus. Finally he got out of Dela ware, and the next day the farmers came in with the oats, but the show was gone, and they won't do a thing to pa if he ever shows up in Delaware again. •Pa met us at the depot in Washington, but he was ever so changed from his long ride and anxiety over the possi bility of being arrested and pilloried, and lambasted by a negro in Delaware. He said to me, with a trembling voice: "Hennery, this 'ere show business is too much for your pa. I would rather be a Mormon, in Utah, with 40 wives, and several hundred children, and long whiskers. I am a changed man, Hen nery, and afraid of my shadow." WASH IN RUNNING WATER. Public Drinking Places in Buenos Ayres Must Cleanse Glasses That Way. "They do some things better in Bueno3 Ayres than we do in this country," said a former Milwaukee man, who has spent many years in Argentina. "It may be considered a small matter by some, and yet one ironclad regulation down there always struck me as emi nently sound—a regulation providing that all glasses used in barrooms, saloons and public drinking places shall be washed in running water. The idea is that by cleansing them in water that is used over and over there is a good chance for the transmission of disease. Inspec tors are always on their rounds seeing that the law is observed, and woe to the man who is found derelict in its ob servance. Buenos Ayres, by the way, is kept as clean as any city in the United States, and is one of the most progres sive towns in the world. "When a man dies down there it does not matter whether he made a will dis posing of his property of not. The law of the country comes into play, and dt» vides all his possessions equally among his heirs. Not one of them can be disin herited. One good effect of this is to do away with big landed estates. Many of these, though, are still of enormous size, and farms of 6,000 acres are the rule, rather than the exception. TJp-to-Date Monks. The monks of the St. Bernard hospice in Switzerland are bound to be up to date. They have purchased an automobile to carry provisions up the mountain. In order not to frighten teams they had a horse hitched to the motor wagon. The gov ernment's permission had to be ob tained, because of the bridges, some of which were not intended for such heavy loads. "Not His First Love. "I understand he married his first love." "Say, how can St fellow marry him* .self?"—T»dee. A LIST OF BICH.MEN. THAT .BE? LIEVE IN WORK. ENTER THE POLITICAL FIELD Nioholas Longworth Good Example— Boosevelts Have Some Money and Large Families—Found and En rich Roosevelt Hospital. EW YORK. The papers have not yet ceased to have fun with the |10, 000,000 deputy po lice commission er, but they will get used to him. It is not so strange for a very rich man to be in politics in Gfoth am. You do not have to go back to the famous congressional campaign between W. W. Astor and the late R. P. Flower, in which money flowed like water, and whisky was as free as the grace of heaven nor to comment upon the seven millions Hugh McLaughlin left nor the unknown number which Richard Croker amassed in a little while as boss. The present has plenty of examples. Young Rhinelander Waldo has ten millions and need never work if he did not care to do so. His money mainly came from his mother's fam ily, the land-owning Rhinelanders. He is tall, sturdy, a plucky soldier, and he and his chief, Gen. Bingham, are a great Improvement upon most of their predecessors. Mayor McClellan himself is comfort ably rich through his marriage with the daughter of John G. Hecksher. There was a time when he worked as a reporter for a moderate salary. For some time he served as exchange reader of the World, about the last thing you can think of in connection with the mayor now. Besides Bing ham and Waldo, the mayor has in his cabinet Dr. Woodbury, the energetic commissioner of street cleaning, who has a few millions at command, but sees no reason why he should not work. J. Sergean Cram, who was dock commissioner under Van Wyck, and whom the newspapers ridicule as Boss Murphies social mentor in such mat ters as not eating peas with his knife, is a social lion only recently he mar ried the daughter of Gen. Lloyd Brice, a girl of about half his years and in the best society. Wealthy Congressmen. O N E SSMAN Sulzer has a fath er who is wealthy and Congressman Ruppert comes of a family of many millioned brew ers. Herbert Par sons, congress-, man and county chairman, is very rich and married, id daughter of Hen ry Clews, a very talented woman. Bourke Cochran, congressman, began life in America as a porter in Claflin's wholesale dry goods house, but has amassed a fortune. Hearst has a few millions against misfortune, and the prospect of twenty more he also is a member of congress, though people forget it in watching his other indus tries. The municipal ownership party is richer in very wealthy men than one would at first suppose. Bird S. Coler, who is making a record as bor rough president in Brooklyn, is a banker of great wealth. Robert Hun ter, one of the pillars of the party, though not himself rich married a Miss Stokes, the sister of young Stokes, whose marriage to Rose Pas tor, the pretty Jewess, is of so recent interest. Nearly all the rich charita ble workers on the East side go with the poor of that section into the M. O., party. Metz, the newly-elected comp troller, has several self-earned mil lidhs. He is a hustler in office as in business. Young Cornelius Vanderbilt, who got only one million from his father, but several more from his bro ther Alfred by an arrangement not to break their father's will, and has, by attention to business, doubled his money, has taken a modest part in the deliberations of the local Republicans, but he is more interested in the do ings of his militia regiment, the Twelfth. The entrance of wealthy men, into politics is in New York a thing to welcome. Such men as I have named are in zeal and ability far above the Johnny Carrolls and Charley Mur phys. It is safer to bring money into politics than to make money out of it. The BoQsevelt Wedding. HE ebb and flow of things, the al ternation of grave and gay in a great city, came after the impres sive and beautiful military funeral W he el Alice Roosevelt and her fiance, young Longworth, came to town shopping and otherwise disporting themselves.. Longworth is himself a good example of the wealthy man in politics. Miss Roosevelt's father may now be so considered, though not disgracefully rich. In fact, when Theodore Roosevelt left Har vard It was necessary for him to stir his stumps and earn not his bread, and butter but his cake. There was no time between his graduation and his election to the vice presidency when his income from his pen wasn't neces sary to him with the needs of his large family in view. The Roosevelts are a prolific race, and though they have much wealth in the aggregate, many subdivisions have been neces sary in the family. Of late years the death of certain relatives have left the president in very comfortable circum stances. Miss Alice has an independ ent fortune from her mother, the first Mrs. Roosevelt. Fortune has a way of showering her gifts without much re gard to needs. The Roosevelt family's most distin guished member in the present gene ration, after the president, is Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, a former minister to The Hague, and a good Democrat— a Theodare Roosevelt Democrat, how ever. In generations past the most ro mantic figure, if not the greatest, in the family was Henry Roosevelt, the silent, reserved bachelor lawyer, who lived modestly all his life and amazed his closest friends by leaving his well invested hoards of many years, a mil lion dollars by that time, to found Roosevelt hospital, since endowed with a much larger sum by other members of the family. Miss Roosevelt's Relatives. HERE are in New York a host of relatives by mar riage and cousin sh of is os velt, but only a few of the nearest are ex pected to be pres ent at the wed ding on the seven teenth. Foremost among these are the two aunts. One of these is tiw wife of a hustling real estate dealer, the other of a na val captain. Mrs. Robinson's husband put through as agent the great land deal necessary to clear 30 acres of city property for the new Pennsylvania station, where the point was to get options on as many houses as possible before the speculators scented game, and he did it well. Capt. Cowles, who married the other Roosevelt aunt, is a burly fellow with a record of active service to his credit. I once saw him putting out from Brooklyn navy yard in a tiny tug for the high seas, to be gone for weeks at a time blowing up derelicts, about as melancholy a task as can be imagined. On her mother's side. Miss Alice is related with plenty of blue blood in Boston, but that is another story. James Emlen Roosevelt is the mem ber of the family best known to sum mer visitors at Oyster Bay it is his yacht landing that the young Roose velts use, their own land facing On Cold Spring harbor. "Rob" Roosevelt lives across the island farther out on the south shore the distance between, perhaps 30 miles, is one of the longer Roosevelt horseback rides in summer. Old Churches of New York. HE First Presby terian church of mn3JJD New York inhab its a structure that dignifies low er Fifth avenue one of the few churches in Goth am that riviil in beauty the best English examples. People who have seldom entered it are deeply inter rir® to ested in its preservation, which is now endangered. The congregation has "moved up-town," like so many oth ers, and there is a deficit. An instance of Christian brotherhood good to see may be shown if the advice of the Scenic and Historic Preservation soci ety is taken and men of all religions unite to save it for its picturesque and historic value its religious work might be done elsewhere, but it can ill be spared. The church will celebrate its two hundredth anniversary in 1916. Old Trinity is a quarter of a century more ancient, though the present structure dates back only to 1846. Old St. Paul's is the most interesting church in the lower city from the fact that it is one of Sir Christopher Wren's designs, and that it contemp tuously turns its back on Broadway and faces the river and the west, the land of promise. St. Paul's is techni cally subordinate to Trinity, and is owned by that wealthy corporation. The old John street Methodist church has a name familiar to nearly everyone in that denomination throughout the country. It is a per fectly plain building and not large, but its walls seem still to echo the words of Asbury and Wright. The new Catholic cathedral is a beautiful building,-but has no historic interest, and the old cathedral in Mott street has neither size or beauty to recom mend it. As New York is more than any other city Jn the land a grouping of ancient villages, some of "its more interesting churches, of which several are already over 200 years old, are sit uated in places like Flatbush and Flatlands, now pasts of thie city, sturdily built by the early --Dutch farm ers, whose descendants aire now rich real estate owners still living In their century-old—and more -—^low-browed farmhouses. Literary interest these stately old buildings dp not possess to compare with old Trinity, and with the tiny church in Sleepy riollow where ,once the headless horseman of Washington Irving reigned ly night, and where Rockefeller with, his en croaching acres is now the bogy night and day. OWEN LANGDOH. GREAT LIFE SAVER. LOBD LISTER, THE "GRAND OLD MAN" OF SUBGEBY. He Has Saved a Quarter of a Million Lives by His Famous Discov ery of Germ De stroyer. In an age when honors are lavished for the skill with which men compass the death of thousands of their fellowa one cannot pay too much homage to those whose mission it is to save and not to destroy life, and happily, says the Chicago Chronicle, there still re mains among us the king of them all a man on whose monument may some day be inscribed this remarkable legend: "He saved a quarter of a mil lion lives." To no other man who has ever lived can such a tribute be paid but to assert that Lord Lister, the "grand old man" of surgery, has snatched 250,000 men from the grave is probably to understate the truth. When Joseph Lister first made his acquaintance with a hospital about 60 years ago, an op eration of any importance meant al most certain death, and even quite simple operations were full of risk. The wounds made by the surgeon'* knife refused to heal, putrefaction was followed by suppuration, the patients became delirious and in a startling ma jority of cases died. It was Lord Lister who discovered the deadly secret of all this mortal ity. He found that the putrefaction of the wound was due to the presence of germs which were introduced from outside, and in carbolic acid he dis covered the means to kil). these germs, thus by this simple discovery revo lutionizing surgery and saving count less lives. An early result of this antiseptic treatment was that "gan grene which had infected 80 per cent, of the wounds disappeared entirely." and to-day operations which wouli have meant certain death half a cen tury ago are performed daily without the least risk of fatal consequences. Such in briefest outlook is the change Lord Lister has wrought in surgery, and one has only to read cf the horrors of the hospitals in pre Listerian days, with their delirious and dying patients, and "their com pound odor of boiled mutton and sour poultices" and then to pay a visit to a hospital of to-day to realize how revolutionary is the change wrought by this one man. It is 60 years almost to a day since young Lister began to study surgery and "medicine at University college, London. He was the son of a very clever man, a fellow of the Royal so ciety. and the inventor, practically, ot the modern microscope, and, as migh*: be expected from the son of such a father, he quickly distinguished him self among his fellow students, gradu ating brilliantly and taking the cov eted F. R. C. S. before he was 25. Then followed a period of splendid training under the great surgeon, Mr. Syme, whose daughter he married, and in I860, at the early age of 33, he was made regius professor of surgery at Glasgow. It was here that he became so deep ly, impressed by the terrible mortality due to operations and he set to work to discover the cause, with the results which we have described. There are still living students who saw him first experiment in antisep tic surgery by making a paste of car bolic Jtcid over the wound, and it was soon admitted that "Lister wards" were the healthiest in the world. But. like many another prophet, he found least appreciation among his own countrymen. Germany, France and other continental countries adopted his methods with avidity, and his fame was European before Great Britain be came a tardy convert to his teaching. However, unlike so many world bene factors, he has lived to see the uni versal triumph of his discovery and to reap honors such as fall to few men in a century. And never, perhaps, did so great a man bear his honors so modestly. At 78 he remains, to quote a great sur geon. "as simple and lovable as a child." His old pupils adore him his numberless friends respect and love him the world counts him one of its greatest benefactors. For the rest he is an ardent lover of nature, skilled in botany and woodcraft, and he declares that the sweetest music oa earth is the song of birds. Thrilling Moment. It was at an English lock that a diver was working at massive gates, when a current, caused by the shutting of the gates for his inspection, sucked him off his feet and he felt himself being drawn between the smooth gates with nothing at which to grasp. And With the shutting his air hose and life line would be cut as with a knife. But in a flash came an inspiration. As he was swept through he took his ham mer and held the iron head between the closing gates and hung there. He dared not signal to be drawn up, for to tug at him would mean death. But the men above quickly realized that something was the matter' and they swung the gates open again, and not tih then did they slowly draw the diver to the surface and to safety.—Techni cal World. Helping Him Out Rivers—Brooks, you've heard that familiar saying: "Give a man rope enough—" Brooks—"And he'll smoke himself to death?" O, yes, I've heard that, and I have often wondered who the pre tending friend of yours is that's try ing to kill you off.—Chicago Tribune*