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UAW French Answers to Query "Why Is An April-Fool?" *-*>? '?*v V*> W *? - -^/os.-rv^ /rs/^Vr^/CN/"ivf^/CivkjitifC^iv<cvOiiiv-^XxC>.^li'rs 0:0:0:0 APRIL Fishes and Easter Eggs in Artistic Paris? And the Origins They Stand For?Where Enameled Paste board Mackerel May Hide Valuable Gifts?And Hand painted Satin Eggs Con tain Only Candy?Expensive April-fooling. ?? t of Th^ s'liir. PARIS March 21 1 F mil want to April-fool an American girl stu dent in I'ar;? send ? <r between March ?_*.-> ami Kaster a magnificent paste hoard mackerel glittering with col ors and enatnel. Tf Its contents are more valuable than eighteen - carat - irnW-platcd chocolate pralinfs she is fooled. < ?r send her Kaster Sunday a srreat Mtin-ft?vwd pasteboard ecu hand paint ed. If i's contents are less valuable t an n dozen pairs of craves she "will be fooleri e\ ?orse II is the fault of the san and moon. Why is an April fool? Civilization was !onsr perfecting h calendar to keep step with the sun. The apparent solar ellipse turning: slowly, the equinoxes not being fixed points, you remember how the civil >ear of Romulus K'jt so far ahead that Her Lucky Basket. Julius i'aesar hart to add eighty-five days to the year B. C. 4.'. to brinp the com mencement of spring back to the ver nal equinox. Sixteen hundred years later It was up to IVpe Gregory XIII to turn the rlock bark. The equinoxes were ar riving ten days ahead of the calendar. So lie rut ten days out of the year 15S and reformed the century- leap years. But It will begin apain in 4.0*? years. I merely mention it in passing. Our real affair is with the moon. April-fooling is due t? the moon's butt In* in. The church had l?ng been run ning a lunar year to determine certain rel: A Basket Full. pious feasts?it rims it yet?whereby Mast er comes irregularly. Hut there was noth ing to confuse the farmer's barley sow ing as long as the year began on a fixed date. Romulus made it bepin March 1; 1'aesar changed it to January 1. and ?'harleniagne shifted it to March 1 again. It was all ripht. Between the first day of the year and the sprinp equinox the numiter of days had been always constant, under each great lawgiver's system, but for the slow-growing discrepancy of the gun, already mentioned. * * Hut when, in the twelfth century, the Christian world transferred New Year from Charlemagne's March 1 to Holy Saturday the lunar year pot in its fine work. Holy Saturday, then as now. might fall anywhere between March 21 and April 24. New Year was no longer a fixed date for centuries. In Kngland. where they came to fix it on March 15, the confusion was si> well avoided that the change to Janu ary 1 was not made until 1752. But in Fiance its mix-up with the solar dis crepancy had grown so troublesome that Charles IX. eighteen years before Pope Gregory's reform, decreed that New Year should apain fall on January 1, as in the *4me of Julius < aesar. It upset New Year pifts tremendously, which brings us to April fool. For centuries every one got his New Year gifts between Marcli 25 and April 2T??on the day before Piaster; and New Year gifts in old-time K n g > a n d. as in France today, -were for all servants, clerks. dependents, hangers-on a serious Jump-sum addition to salary?quasi-legal. When New Year was moved to January 1 these, with all feudal retainers, farm 1 ands. apprentices and poor relations, set up a howl that begran March "7. 1.W?. In Fngland the howl was set uj? two centuries later, when the same change 'vns effected, and in other countries in *i.e years between, as happened, but the howl was the same howl. My March 20 ail children and grand children. big and little; nephews, nieces, cousins even beauteous youns wives and er.paued girls, joined in the howl for the customary New Year gifts. By April 1. therefore, most hrads of families, to buy peace. began to cough up. What? Why. moderate gifts, to keep re cipients patient until January 1. 3t: * * These became New Year presents. Bui those who found the douoie < aim too nervy, as the years rolled on. evolved April fool gifts. All April fool catches, likewise, have ttvu origin in the disappointed expecta tions of the greedy. Around April 1. by centuries of habit, the whole social fabric was out hunting gift*. So it taught hyp ocritical willingness-to-obllge n lesson to send it upon fake errands, for John Collins ("Mansleur Petit-Jean" or "a. gen tleman from Paris'* or a. pint of huile de coude (elbow grease) instead of huile de cade (juniper <>ii that cures the itch>. April fool gifts took a fishy form by the fault of the sun. In April the sun quits ihe zodiacal sign of the fishes; and as the mackerel then abounds beyond ail others on the French coast, the mackerel became the April fool fish. It had al ready a bad-enough name, from its varie gated scales recalling Harlequin, the bril liant but unprejudiced darling of the ladies. So. between the two. to refer to the gills or fins of a well-set-up young fellow is to insinuate almost a fortune hunter. So. sending his April fish filled up with chocolate creams to married ladies to whom he owes dinners, the young Parisian does not mark them "Without Prejudice," the motto of the mackerel. Faster eggs lend themselves to no such equivocations. Nicolas <'erlse read in Aelius I>ampridus that a hen belonging to the father of Alexander Severus laid a red egg on the day when that child, des tined to l?e emperor, was born!?which anecdote displays the red egg a pa^jan sign of supreme power. And Faster eggs, he says, recall at the spring equinox the mysterious flowering of life, which is an ancient symbol, merely continued by the church. The Abbe Coignard. however, sees In Easter eggs only a Christian symbol of the resurrection. He believed the simple Joy of eating eggs?of which the middle age faithful had been deprived along with meat during Fent?sufficient cause to color them with the ancient r?^al purple for Faster Sunday. -<J went well so long a.s the Paris pop ulation merely dyed its Faster eggs in beet 3a!ee. It mattered nothing that the ancient kings of France gilded them to distribute among the nobles of the court. Good Jx>uis XI, however, was a kingly democrat before the Bonapartes. He l'ound it a Joke to humble his haughty nobles by coloring the royal Faster eggs with plebeian beet Juice, with mere stripes of royal gilding. The economy in gilding permitted him to Counting His Favors. distribute fifty times more eggs than his predecessors: and if the nobles accepted them with hidden disappointment, vast multitudes of enthusiastic common peo ple at the church door? of Sens, Pontoise, Tours and Paris struggled for them, as for royal decoration..and they set them proudly on the mantelpiece as proof of high relations with the sovereign. So do common people in our day cherish the au tograph-photo of Roosevelt that Loeb sent them, probably by mistake. * * * Who can foresee starts of luxury and pride? Previous to Ixuiis XI the Pari sians had nicked Easter eggs for ljeeps, rolled "them down Mount St. Genevieve like 1he kids of Washington, D? and eaten then) up dean by Pentecost. Now, the royal strijtf* of gilt started them, first, hoarding. Middle-class Paris families could show rows of royal eggs, one for each year, on the mantelpiece. ? Secondly, they began Issuing social, souvenir and other pride-laden Plaster e?TKs. too splendid to be eaten, even on the years of births and marriages! Until, under the reign of T^oiils XV, when the greatest painters, notably Wat teau and I.andret. spent weeks and weeks in advance decorating Easter eggs that sell today for fabulous prices?fragile masterpieces packed in cotton?that the great revolution Jtself came just in time to stop a sinister accumulation. Paris was getting full of stale eggs. Therefore, since the revolution. Easter eggs for eating are just colored red with cochineal, while gift and souvenir like the mackerel, are wisely constructed of pasteboard, silk or satin covered and decorated by girls who have taken paint in?r lessons somewhere. Surprise nests arc- popular with those who cannot hope for jewelry in a small egg of navy-blue morocco. At the "article de Paris" counters of the big department stores you buy the junk that tempts you, job-lot morocco miniaiure photo cases, dozens of hand-painted porcelain but tons. ostrich plumes, gloves and perfum eiy, manicure sets, delicate little bisque figurine? fragile china bonbon boxes, sil ver bonbon boxes, powder and puff boxes, "i;tle gilt-bronze obje< ts. lace glove hand kerchiefs, solidified perfumes. Then you buy your "nests" of satin-cov ered egps. Ten egps. t<>n objects, if you're mean; or. if they're cheaper, twenty^ * * * (>ne rs? ? -a:j hold a dozen tiny, tiny miniature enameled bronzes for tne man tel, pips. cats, roosters, pups, lions, tigers and a little child to icad them. Into an other ogn you can put a parasol handle in pink quartz, blue Jade or amethyst. These are not nests. One egg's enough, if it contains a solid gold buckle, or a dozen miniature books the size of your thumb joint or a gold ball perfume squirtc- the size of a marble. Of course, you can put them inside of fish and call ti'cin April fools. When the gift is- satisfactory there is no objection. The boulevard is full of eggs. The boule vard is fn'l of fish. Ksfgs as big as your bead in t:ie morning, with compartments for silverware, tine china, toilet articles or new art tilings In tainted gold, block tin, degraded silver or pink copper. There are eggs as tiny as her finger' nail, carved jade, to hold an unset jewel. And there are gigantic, scintillating mackerel, long enough to hold umbrella, parasol and "en ??as," the umbrella-parasol between the two. "in case" it rains or shines. All of which Is far from the standiud April fool of the less pretentious classes, a stale mackerel sent "collect" in a neat wooden box. The stationers' windows are full of pay cardboard mackerel with hooks In their mouths, to !?? attached to prorn enaders" coat tails, printed large: "1 am incapable:" "I am betraye*}!'* or "lost," A Little Shaver. or, "drunk." or "Send me home!" or "kick me!" The post-card trade issues trick-sur prises. Pull the expensive-looking post, card from its tissue-paper envelope and a coiled wire sends the whole business flying. Or yoq can buy hand-written love letters, proposals, notices to quit, or the most realistically filled-upfhecks on non existent banks. A great trade is done in free admission Easter Eggs for tickets to Impossible sights and entertain ments. Jokers go to the expense of put ting fake ads In the daily- papers. Their return Is to loaf round the spot, enjoying it. Thus: "Beer Garden of the Sucking Kitten, rue du Vleux-Pont de Sevres. *J2. This famous old establishment will lie re opened under new management the after noon of April 1. The public is invited to a strictly frratultous entertainment, lunch, punch, inauguration of the grottoes, fire works. St. Lazare train or St. Germain tram." Tickets "to visit the Interior'* of the obelisk of Luxor keep hundreds of inno cent Parisians, even, blocking the Place de la Concorde. "The obelisk is full!" says the happy policeman. "We wish to visit the interior!" explain bunches of newcomers. "The obelisk is full!" the gathered crowd tells in impor tant whispers. "When will it l>e empty?" some one gathers nerve to ask. '"I do not know," says the policeman. Even when they learn that the obelisk is full of stone they hang around for the delight of hearing others ask, "We wish to visit the interior!" Cofnplete collections of these vulgar catches, packed inside an enameled paste board mackerel that costs $4.40. make sinart April fools to send to laughing ladies. They consider it amusing pastime? when the obvious cost of the fish proves your intentions liberal?to unpack and read them aloud in the plnk-llt tearoom, to pass them from hand to hand. "Here's one for you. Nell!" or "The very thing for Jeannette!"?all those absurd sur prises, from the beautifully engraved so ciety invitation' in which "Dr. Henri de Rothschild begs the pleasure of your pres ence at the Inauguration of the Ducos vacuum-milkers"* at the famous St. Ger main hygienic dairy farm connected with his honored name, to numbered par quet tickets to a "Sylvia ballet matinee'* at the Grand Opera, which never gives a matinee, "interspersed with a lecture by Count Robert de Montesquiou." April-fooling is a good taste in Paris provided you accompany it with a valu able and pleasing gift. The confectioners will sell you great canvas gold bags, such as the banks use. apparently packed full. You actually feel the edges of the coins protruding, and. untying the bay. you really do come first on a let of loose gold Mother and Child. coins tfcftt hide the bo* lid: for the stiff bag 1? an April-fool box like any nthc? And the loose coins? They may he real, if that If your fancy; otherwise they glided papier-mache fraud*. so beautifully imitating the current four-dollar imld piece that our Treasury deuth* would confiscate them. Their chief u>e is to April-fool boarding school girls. I hat^ even seen Jewel cases apparently packed full of the delightful trinket.-, thai Marguerite in the opera wanted *o badK . but it was only a shallow trayful of tlie rubles, sapphires and pearis they now imitate so remarkably. Beneath were ^Li.UO worth of the inevitable chocolates, and the entire April-fool outfit came t-? m trifle of only $f$.Y Yon see how easily ft Is done. Kaster *gg gifts or fishy April-fools, they ate Interchangeably acceptable, provided thai the same expense is put upon them. STKR 1.1 NO viK'? tr;. Fish for Her Net. ENJUNGLEMENT OF TEDDY AND ITS EFFECT UPON THE REAL BIG GAME HUNTERS Special 0?>rri'spnn<]?U''e <?f Too fctzr. ATLANTIC CITY, April 3. 1900. ARSHALL P. WILr UER, the enter tainer, lives in a young palace of his own down here when he isn't working. Met him yesterday after noon as lie pedaled along on his board walk bicycle. He had some shrewd views about big jtatne bunting ar.d things which I am go ing to quote. Ixwk.s as if. during the next year or .??>. we sure are going to have one big gorge on bleed and bones, garnished with jungle-beater*. <l-stringed outfit carriers, the bellowings <?f dying giraffes?that is, i; giraffes do bellow-the chipper-chap perings of chimpanzees hiking from tree i<i tree, miasmatic vapors, clerman nat urallsts slow!:- < onsumed by boa-con s-tru'etom and all Ilk* that." observed Mr. Wilder. v. i.o ad an armful of just ? ? it magazines strapped to the front of his wheel. 'All of the dime and fifteen ? ?-nt monthlies for March and April, as well as the nickel and dime weeklies tor n lot of weeks past, have printed jungle .unung articles. with d.t. illustrations, f.avfce you've noticed. "Strangrtj familiar, some of these arti ;es. a- perhaps you've noticed also. M.ivbe I read some of them during some previous irn a r nation. i dunno. But quite a number or thein 1 sten t<> me like read ir.e Bill Nye or Artemus Ward over asaln. I employ?-d a certain lit:le method of ? i'- wn to prove to my own satisfaction I at I <i rfU'i at ]ear=t a few of these arti ? !*???. pails of tliem at any late, on previous occasions. Coming to a certain .ii< tden! in on** of tlie^f jungle articles, the opening lines would strike me as cop\ ti.at I d scanned and become chum my with, as it were, on some previous occasion quite a w i.ile ago. Well. I'd rest the magazine on my lap and close my e.e*. and then try to remember just how the story that I'd read before had finished. B\ digging a bit at niy mem 0 >? the wind-up of the yarn I had pre vious! v read would straighten itself out. '1 ieu I d pick up the magazine read the it oldent through a;-- set down for dead n?w fresh ati tY and 1 found that 1 was 1 :gi;* a? to m> memory of the thing in about four rases out ?.f^ive "Kind of fishy, toe. some of the names ! -eTixeil in affixed to some of these jun K e art!< lev '?'ai>t. Montmorency How ard de Vane 'Maj. Fitasherbert Majori bapk? ue \cte "l>e Peyster Waldo von Becknnheim ?*.T.S.'?well, I'm not quot :> k i*?l names, you see. but they sound .?t natural to roe as some of the :.!ine^ pinr.cd to these African hunting stones that I ve ( leading lately. Soi t of madf me imagine? my reflec tions upon the ornamental oddness, so to f'-f'dk. of some of these names. 1 mean? tiiat well, -that the sure-enough hunters in \tri an j irijsles just didn't happen to l.e around and < n the job to build up i s-,n r>: prlnte 's ink ramhal in antici pation of Teddy's enjunglemftit so that the magaziro editor foiks, heitig kind of stanipeded for stuff l.ad to do the best t ?y could kind o". to put it ti.at way. "Fa* ; is I've always understood that ! c sure-en- gli *>.g gatre hunters wire c'.et retiring. not to say bashful chapv n?>t at all add'< ted to t e business o: talking o v. -iting about their exploits. 1 reroembo reading ?? goo-1 man\ veais f*r o at ait i- le on this subject written bj .*i,<.rcw I a;g fot some British publica t op. In tiiai article Mr l.ai.g la prett? good auth- rity in these matters. I should say seeing that ' e ;s not only a man of letters but a swell mixer > Mr. I.ang ?iatcd that even the names of the great e?t big game huritfi? in the world were absolutely unknown to the world in gen e? al. lie went on to say that they were . haps who. out of a sort of innate modesty preferred to keep nr.der cover: that the\ couldn't l>e induced to put pen Hi paper to des- rib* their bunting ad* ventures, no ma'ter how milch money was offered lo them for this kind ? f stuff .?-,(! ihat it was onlv with the greatest d fti< tilry that t'.iev conld he got to even r.t< i ic.i hunting stunt ? in s-? i.il I companies, unless all of the men sur rounding them happened to be big game sportsmen themselves. "That's why I've been sort of wonder ing as to where all of these jungle-ad venturing majors and captains and chaps with peculiar-looking membership or de gree initials' tacked on to their names, who've been getting so printer's inkil> garrulous about the jungle business in the picture publications- lately?wondering where they all happened to pop from and how they happened to pop at this particu lar time, when our distinguished Nim rodus Americanus is just about to dart into the African thickets. " Some of 'em. too, I notice, appear to get their geography kind of mixed in their narratives of encounters with ani mals. For a sample, I came upon no le^s than three highly blurdy and bonc crunchy descriptions of hand-to-hand fights which these mysterious majors and captains and things salted that they had witli tigers?tigers. rememlK-r?in tin African jungles. "Now. rve always had. the impression. atW I'm Just bullheaded enough to be lieve that* the impression is correct, that there are no sure-enough tigers in Africa ?not the kind of tigers that we 'uns are familiar with, anyhow, from having seen "em in circus menageries and zoos and so on. Tigers, I've always understood are an Asian product. There are lions and leopards and cheetahs and rats lik.: those in Africa, according to the dope I've always placed reliarne in. bu' no hone.^t Injun tigers. But these chaps with the too-fancy names who art? maybe?writing these advance notices of the big African expedition that's soon to happen?why. they're writing ever so glibly, some of them, about iiow they felt the hot breaths of tigers in their faces just an instant before they managed to pull their hunting knives and ripped 'em? the tigers. I mean?from forepeak to miz zenmast, and all like that-a-way. "Read another story, profusely illus trated with pictures that somehow or another. looked phony to me. about how somewhere in German Bast Africa, I 'All of the Dime and Fifteen-Cent Monthlies as Well as the Nickel and Hunting Articles." Dime Weeklies Have Printed Jungle think it was. an alligator?set that, alli gator?crept steathily up behind a boy jungle )>eater who was sitting on a log picking a thorn out of his foot and gob bled the dinge up at one mouthful, and then beat it buck into the roily, bubbling streamlet. Well, that was pretty sad. all right enough, but that alligator must have been a crocodile. There's a heap of difference between an alligator and a crocodile, and there are no alligators in ?Africa that ever T heard of. and I've been hearing of things for quite a spell now. I sure have. "The gorilla-hunting stories are all just exactly alike. 1 notice. Same boi ilia hunting stories that I used 10 read fully thirty years ago. mostly in Knglish mag azines <?f that period. It a'ppear* thai, the young German naturalist accompany ing the gang on a gorilla hunt always gets it in the neck on these occasions. It's a wonder they wouldn't, if even for the sake of variety, hand the bone i-runching finish to the Dutchman or the Knglishman or the American, or even one of the more or le**s useless natives ac companying these gorilla-hunting outfits. B it they don't. They never do. They alwavs reserve that hideous fate for Heir von Splootzenheim. "a clever and lovable young. German naturalist, whose sad fate threw a gloom over all of us.' "The way these gorilla hunts always terminate Is this: They chase the ?orilla \ip a tree after they've located him, and then, while he sits up there combing his hair or something, why. they spread an enormously strong net of inch rope and leather thongs below the tree, and then they sit down for three or four days and wait for the gorlll^ to come down into the net. "The gorlla, of course, always comes down. The gorilla never knows a thing about any net. or any people that've been hanging around waiting for him to come down, until he finds himself en meshed in the net. Then he begins to snort with rage, and proceeds to tear the awfully strong net into ribbons, as if it were composed of so much darning cotton. "Just when the gorilla is through wiiii tearing the net into little bits of pieces, why. poor young Herr von Splootzenheim. the clever and lovable young German nat uralist, is always dancing around with a ramera. trying to get snapshots of the gorilla in his foaming rage. The gorilla doesn't like that snapshot copiedy. it seems, and so he always makes direct for Herr von Splootzenheim. There are plenty uf other members of the party standing around 'transfixed with fear' and all like that. But nix. The gorilla doesn't want any of the others. Me wants the German or nobody, and he always gets him. Wraps his long hairy arm- around the poor young feller, and there's a hideou* sound of the grinding, in-bent ribs, and then we all turn our faces away to shut out the horrid sight, and then, having completed his devilish work, why. the gorilla scampers off into the jungle, and when we go to where Herr von Sploot zenheim lies, why. we find him quite, quite dead. That's two qtiites, and, of course, he's deader'n a door nail. Jf there were only one quite maybe there'd be some chance to revive him and pull him through, but the two quites always settle his hash. "Then we're getting, too, with all sorts: CARLTON, WASHINGTON'S HEADQUARTERS, SAVED TO POSTERITY ISTORli! t.'arlton, a beautiful colonial homestead at Queen l.aiie. Pa., associ ated with memories of Washington, it the most crucial period of the revo lution, has been saved. It was almost * wept away to make room for a nitration plant intended to purify wat r to be tarried into Philadelphia. The war over the property lias rr-ged for a matter of eijjht years. atid until a month ago r looked as if the superb old mansion was surely doomed. Hut the spirit of Washington's birthday saved the picturesque relic. Those who had been protesting against the sacrilege ? oncen;rated their arguments on councils ilurinK the week of February when the ? elebration in honor of the father of his ?-.oui;?r> hat] been hlling the popular mind, and by thus hitting at the right moment they succeeded in saving the venerable mansion when- Washington had his head quarter- before he moved hi--" troops out un to the bleak heights of Valley Forge, and entered into the most dismal and ap parently helpless period of the combat for freedom. * .*? * When the suggestion was first made that t'arlton. a colonial relic, must give way to the filtration plant the idea was not taken seriously. It Is located not far from Germantown in a section of the Keystone stHtc which is rich In memories of the colonial days, ami where the relics have iwi-n treasured with most jealous arc. Hut the architects and engineer? of the i'v decided tliat ihi\ had to have the ground on which Carlton stood. They needed the space; they couldn't get alon^r without it. Sentiment was all right, but if the city was to have pure water other things would have to be sacrificed, so the owners were notified that \hey would have to prepare to vacate. Neither the protests of the owners nor the bitter opposition of the Germantown History Club availed to alter the decision of councils that both the house and the magnificent trees that surround it must give way. The owners. Robert F. Smith and his -sitter. Mrs. K. S. Newhall. then occupying the mansion, were forced from their beau tiful old homestead. In which they had not only the pride of ownership, but which they had preserved with reverence because of its association with the father of his country. They obtained .a new house and spent a couple of thousand dollars in arranging the sp'endid colle.tion of curios. which they had assembled during their time of residence in the historic halls of Carl ton. ?'* But meantime, evert though the> had r# irh>vcd. and t'ariton was city property according to the law, and a tit mark for the work of the de-trover, they never gave up the fight ty save it. The Historical Society had it guarded during the period it was in the hands of the city to seo that no vandalism was perpetrated until the final sacrifice came. Renewed pressure was brought to hear on the city authorities, and finally the feeling hecamc so strong that the design ers of the filtration plant were ordered to readjust their plans in some such way that it would not be necessary to Intrench en t lie grounds of Carlton. The method b\ which this could he done whs finally solved during Washington's birthday week, and the owners arc now back in the property, and have it in cx actl> th< condition it was. Never has a mansion spared from a historic period been more carefully guard ed than Carlton. Mr. Smith and Mrs. Newhall. residing there now, really lio'd It in trust for the public. They are ever cheerfully ready 10 show visitors through, and in their living habits they have borne some minor inconveniences rather than change the lines of a home whose begin nings date all the way back to the early days of the eighteenth century. The tryt of land on which t'arlton stands can be traced back without inter ruption to John and Ann. Lowtlier. ' to whom it was sranted by William 1'etin in the closing years of the seventeenth c n tury. In 17.11 James Turner bought the prop erty. wjiicli he in turn sold to John Asli mead. By ? 184o the amount of land In the estate had decreased to 100 acres, the remainder having in various sales been separated from the main estate. It came into the Smith family in 1S40, Cornelius Smith being the purchaser, and since that time it has not been permitted to get out of the family. In the rooms which the laborer's rake and ax were to reduce to crumbling ruins, the great father of his country faced nr >blems which would have broken the courage of a heart less strong. In August, 1777, a few months before the ragged, barefoot army was to take the winter encampment at Valley Forge, Front View of Carlton. just before and immediately after the dis astrous battle of Brandywioe had shown the hard pressed commander the futility of further attempts to keep the victorious hosts of Lord Howe out of Philadelphia, and only a few weeks before the exas perating defeat of Germantown had all buj reduced the patriotic army to panic, it was then'that the Continental soldiers encamped on tiie Queen Kane plateau. There were ll.OnO soldiers in this motley army, ill-fed, ill-armed and still worse clothed. They were mainly from New Jersey. Pennsylvania, New York, Mary land. Virginia and North Carolina. According to an entry in the journal of Adjt. Gen. Timothy Pickering, u;t offi cer of Washington's s.aff. the continental army reached this camping ground Fri day. and Washington at once took up his quarters iji Carlton the first day of Au gust. 17T7. Washington knew thai the enemy was a the capes on the Delaware planning to attack Philadelphia. He came to Queen Lane to prepare a plan for the defense of the city. Sunday. September 14, the ariny having repaired their arms and received ammuni tion. marched from their camp and moved toward the enemy. Twelve days la er came the battle of Germantown. Gen. Knyphausen. after the battle of Germantown. took possession of Carlton, and made it his headquarters, stabling his horses where only a few weeks before those of the continental commander had been. The original structure still remains, for the owners have guarded with jealous care the rough walls which were honored by the presence of the father of his country, its greatest general and its first chief executive. The room in which Washington had his fpiarters, where he lived, ate. me; his officers and planned out his campaigns, had been kept in much its original condi tion. and Is filled with colonial furniture, relics of Washington and a host of in teresting relics of the early days of the nation. of trills, arpeggios and variations, th# old. old story about the outfit rook-?l ways a might dead-game hombrey, who's l?een .jamming around the world all hi* life?who is bitten by wmc mysterious kind of a fly or insert no bigger than the head of a pin?bitten while lie sleeps. you know. Well, by the time he wakes tip tin arm that has been bitten by the mysteri ous Insert has swelled to twice its normal size, and then his body begins to swell, and presently he's the size of the great vat of Heidelberg, only bigger. He begs the outfit surgeon to chop off his arm. but the surgeon hates to do I: or something, n.nd then the afflicted man. never uttering a whimper though hi* agony must be something fierce, harks tl>e arm off with a jungle ax or some tool of that sort. But it's too late, and lie cashes In. and then all of the natlvo bearers and jungle beaters, being 1n a state of panic over the mysterious in sect. desert the outfit, and then the hut - eis have a devil's own time packing thel> sear by srliort stages?they can only make St'H) yards a day through the dense jungle ?to the Mountains of the Moon, wliich are only tl.SJS!) miles away. "Yes. and they're ringing in a lot of ilie old. old serpent stories that used to make us kids shiver sumpln fierce tray back yonder when Andy Johnson still wis President. "Several of 'em. for example, have pu'I ed that old. old python yarn that wa.- a joke even when Jerome K. Jerome looked upon a? a funny man. for Jerome kidded the yarn unmercifully in one of his stories. "The python yarn that I'm here ad verting to?you'll recognize it Instantly in a minute when I run over it?original I y was told by some chap who'd lived in India. It was exclusively an Kast Indian yarn. But now it has been revamped anH refurbished and fixed up as an African occuri enoe. "Oh. \ou remember that python story all right. "Seems thai * (dip pish young M!om In the Indian civil servh-e had a wife?Eng lish sirl. of course?who was deadly afra^I of snakes. There were all sort* of punk ?'iino snakes in the pajt of India whoie they lived, particularly pythons, arid tl? mere thought of em almost made hei faint. "Well, just to 'cure' her?ah-huh, cure her?of her aversion to snakes., win, what. does her cut-up of a hus Latid d?> but get a bunch of his servants to rapture a huge pythorf?must ha' been a hundred loot long, or nearly - and kill it. Then, while his wife was out 'tending to the getting of supper, why, the gay young hubby has his servant* p'.act: about nineteen feet of the d?>ad j-er pent. including the head, in the bedroom of his wife, and the rest of the fine, d,?n dy snake trailing out of the window Into the garden. He fixed things this-a-wa\. you tee. for the purpose of curing Ms wife of her aversion to snakes. Aftet thus arranging matters the light-hearted and ingenious young hubby of the wile afraid of snakes got pn his horse and iode down the road a piece to attend to a quarrel among the natives. "He didn't get back till along toward midnight. Noticing that his wife wasn't on tiie steps to meet him. as usual, he hustled, feel'ng kind o' funny about mat ters. to her bedroom, and there he finds ugh! horrors!?why. he finds his wife In the embrace of a stupetijus python, and there's only a little bit of his wife stlM in sight ai that. Nope, the python tlia: ha J been killed by his native servants hadn't come back to life and staked the unfortunate young wife to a benevolent assimilation. But the female mate of th* slaughtered python, you see. had followed the trail of her dead mate, and she'd found the d^ad python with a portion of hijn in the yosing woman's bedroom, and the young woman was there, too. }n a dead faint from having caught sight of the dead python, and what more natural than that the female python should have concluded to get hunk and square mat ters up by absorbing the doomed young woman? "Great little yarn. that, and it was even greater and more chftllfying. I ?an remember, wiien I used to read it. Quite a stretch before the Philadelphia cen tennial. Somehow 01 another, though, it doesn't have quite such a marrow-curdling effect, upon me now that they've switch*'! it to Africa. Still. I reckon, maybe titjr marrow isn't quite s<? susceptible to curd lings as it used to l>e. It must Ik- that."