The San Francisco call. [volume], December 15, 1895, Page 15, Image 15

About The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913

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El Dorado!
"In those days there were giants in the
land * * * mighty men of old that
were of power and renown."
El Dorado! classic, storied, dulcet El
Dorado; a name that meant fortune, glory,
audacity and manly daring for centuries
to the cavaliers of Spain, and even the
buccaneers of England. It is, even to this
day, a word of romance the wide world
over, and, on Spanish lips, the sweetest
founding word that can be Uttered. And
right here permit a protest to be filed
against our coarse and mushy mouthing
of the soft and alliterative names that are
no mean intention. The very name of
this State is poetry and song on Spanish
lips and could and should be music on our
own if we only would have it sou El Do
rado is not only one of the charter counties
of this mighty commonwealth, with its one
Golden Gate open to the Orient, but she is
the mother of all the mines and mountain
counties up and down the iand. For it
was in her great, warm, rich heart, right
in the heart of her heart, that gold was
lirst discovered.
Fremont and Kit Carson left bleeding
footprints here long before the days of
gold. In fact El Dorado, it would seem,
was always El Dorado — the heart of gold,
the heart of California, as she must forever
remain.
And now let me cite a fact not published.
Fremont has been derided, this soldier,
Senator, settler and cavalier, for not hav
ing found gold before Marshall found it; I
but it is a fact that he led directly to the
finding of it by Marshall. More than forty
years ago Marshall took down a dusty
book from a shelf in his cabin and read me
the following from Fremont's report to the ;
Government:
February 23— This was our most difficult
day. We were enforced off the ridges by the
quantity of snow among the timber, and
obliged to take to the mountain sides, where,
orcas-ionally, rocks and a southern exposure
led us a chance to scramble along; but
these were s:eep and slippery with snow
and ice, and the tough evergreens of the
mountain impeded our way, tore our skin
and exhausted our patience. Going ahead
with Carson to reconnoiter the road, we
reached, in the afternoon, the river which
made an outlet of the lake. Carson sprang
clear across a place where the stream was
compressed among rocks, out the parfleche
sole oi my moccasin glanced from the icy
rock and precipitated me into the river. It
me few seconds before I could recover
myself in the current, aud Carson, thinking
me hurt, jumped in after me, and we both had
an icy bath. We tried to search awhile for my
gun. which had been lost in the fail, but the
i-oi.i drove us out. We afterward found that
the gun had been slung under the ice which
lined the banks of the creek. * * * The
forest was imposing to-day in the magnificence
of its trees; some of the pines, bearing large
5, were ten leet in diameter. Cedars also
abounded, and we measured one twenty-eight
and a half feet m circumference four feet from
the ground (redwoods). Here this noble tree
seemed to be in its proper soil and climate.
We found it on both sides of the Sierra, but
most abundant on the west.
"I came up here to look for those big
trees of Fremont's," said Marshall, as he
closed the book with a bang. "I found
them, began to build the mill to make
them into lumber, and that is the way
we came to find gold away up in the heart
of old El Dorado."
You must know Marshall had not been
ionfi froirs Oregon, only a year or so, and
■ • course Juiew nothing about the Califor
nia i-fterras except what he gathered from
the official reports of Fremont. I am not
eager to intrude my opinions, but I can't
help saying that it look 3as if Fremont
lite as much to do with leading up
.scovery that led up to the victori
sulta of our great Civil War as Cap
- :tter; even more, for if Sutter had
iped Marshall, the millwright, to
• c big redwoods out of which to
- .ion lumber for the vast treeless valleys,
one else ■would surely have done so,
I >oon; for the city-builders, the world
uuilders, the blue-eyed people, were arriv
ing, arriving, and they must have lumber
to build with.
To the right and to the left, up the
river to the everlasting snow, down the
river to and into the very cornfields of the
great Sacramento Valley the inflowing
people passed like a ceaseless torrent,
till El Dorado was not only denuded of
her noble forests, but literally laid bare to
the bone. Never was seen such ceaseless
PLACERVILLE (FORMERLY "HANGTOWN") TO-DAY.
energy ; such tireless industry. It meant
Home.
And who the men? Many came from
Oregon, following Marshall. Here in
Hangtown still is a man, famous and be
loved in Oregon, who was of the first to
join his old comrade. He has been here
nearly fifty years, and now verges on to
90. He is one of those who met under the
great fir trees of Oregon in 1846 and pro
claiming to the world that they were
"not subjects of England, but citizens of
the United States," sent Joe Weeks at
midwinter all the way to Washington on
horseback as delegate! Truly, "in those
days there were giants in the land."
Haskins, author of "The Argonauts of
California," says of this man, Judge Rus
sell, that he is perhaps one of the best read
men on the globe; tnat he has done noth
ing else but read and read and meditate
and meditate there in the new htt,e red
wood groves for nearly half a century;
read and "rock" out gold enough for his
simple wants.
The men from the other side of the con
tinent came mainly by sea, and they too
were "bookish" men, men of the very best
material to be found. Here was Senator
Stanford, Senator Conners, Senator Cole.
pioneers; halfway up the long straggling
Street of Hanetown, half an hour's gal
lop from where gold Tas first found, is the
old house of Judge Sanderson, where Sybil
Sanderson was born. In truth this sketch
would be mainly a catalogue of names
should it hold ail the renowned names of
El Dorado. _
And this brings me to a matter which 1
khave had much at heart for a quarter of a
nentury; the people here were from the
lirst arid are still of the best, the very best
in this broad land. I don't know that the
littie libelous stories, "sentimental rot,"
that bright authors have asked El Dorado
Ie father have done great harm or that the
people here had cared about them one
way or the other, but I do know tnat iv
language, incident, color, character, in
all- the features in fact that once made
them delight the world, they had far less
application to El Dorado than London. Of
course our great humorist, Mark Twain,
never expected us to take his "Roughing
It" quite seriously. We have laughed at
his broad charcoal work and it has done us
good. But sentiment tales that people
old El Dorado only with "honest gamblers
and virtuous women of the town, swear
ing to noble deeds in a London dialect,"
mislead the young and disgust the old. Let
us have done with such stuff: and, without
his knowledge orconsent, I want to find an
example of the sort of men I found here
forty-one years ago. I lind the same sort
of people here to-day, earnest, very earn
est; not only very earnest but better read,
far better read, than people of cities. You
see they have no broad lighted streets on
which to rind diversion at nights; no
theaters; nothing but bcoks, music, and
the sweet little courtesies of refined tire
side iife. But here is the paragraph, the
picture from the grandly brave old heart
that has battled and patiently borne de
feat after defeat here for nearly fifty
years. Not a word misspelled, not even
so much as a comma out of Dlace, yet the
hand that penned it has done more hard
"HArGTOTVN" IN '49.
Ilr produced from an o d»ti ne engravin;.}
work than any fifty men to be found in
any city you can name.
"Soon none will be left to tell the story
of that wonderful liraiiia played among
i the rocks in the high Sierras — none to
record the frailties or sing the virtue* of
the actors. Soon all will be prospecting
along the shores of that mysterious river
where gold counts for nothing. Yes; we
i love to occasionally look back through the
I misty twilight into those deeply shaded
I gulches, where red-shirted miners were
working out with pick and pan a greater
good to mankind than from the hand or
sword of the Cresars.
"But they are going — all going,— those
j red-shirted miners of the long ago — this
I time without their blankets. Softly and
! silently we see them stealing, one by one,
over the rocks and down the gulches.
Their scattering footmarks grow dimmer
and dimmer as the years go by, and lower
and lower hang the cypress boughs about
their cabin doors.
"Go with me if you please, down into
yonder deeply shaded gulch and see if you
will that brown-faced but beardless young
miner bending feverishly over that pan of
clay and sand and gold. Oh, those little
| specks of sold! How they glimmer and
I shimmer and shine in that young miner's
i eyes. They tell of mother and a horne —
i perhaps of wife or babe or bird in nome■
■ land.
''Now he is going home. Home! How
the heart throbs and beats and bounds.
Those little specks of gold have done it.
In his dazed condition he lives over again
the life of a year ago. He stands again at
the garden gate where a thousand farewell
kisses left their sadness and their sweet
ness on his lips."
The strong impulse toward the mines
to-day makes the old times new, and
the "old scenery new also. Hangtown
literally smells of paint. They tell you
here that the year now closing has been
the best one El Dorado has seen for twenty
years past; not a vacant store, nor
a vacant house of any sort in all
Hangtown. Will it last? Ido not know,
but believe it will. You remember when
Australasia cot out of mining and had to
go back to her mines lately? You know,
among other old mines, that had been
abandoned, they — by a new process for re
ducing ores — opened the old "Morgan
Hill mine." Result? The Morgan Hill
mine the past year has yielded twelve
millions net profit in dividends! Well,
J we may have fifty Morgan Hills in old El
Dorado easily.
Hangtown — pardon me, El Dorado. I
am of the old boys, the "has beens," and
Hangtown will always be Hangtown tome.
Call it Placerville and "resolute," as you
please. Hangtown hides up under the
sapphire heavens that are propped up by
pillars of the whitest snow peaKs under the
sun. This means pure water, pure air.
This means health. And do you know El
Dorado is one continuous vineyard and
orchard, as well as gold mine? "Come
and see." Here is a picture of Placerville
as drawn by Haskins and now in nis
"Argonauts." The tree before the tavern
is the famous hangman's tree that gave
the uruesome name to the town and creek.
When I went to look for this tree yester
day I located it, after more than forty
years' absence, under the porch of a new
hardware-store.
"Yes, sir, there is just where the old
stump is, down under the asphalt pave
ment and about where that big plow
stands," said the proprietor. Think of it !
The antithesis! I went and got a photog
rapher. Look upon that picture and then
upon this. Surely the six-shooters had
been turned into plowshares!
The story of the unhappy hanging!
Here it is, taken from the voluminous his
tory of El Dorado:
The sobriquet of "Haogtows," by which
THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1895.
Piacerville was at one time only known, and
which is now not unfrerjuently applied, had
its origin in the hanging by a mob, in 1849,
of two frenchmen and a Spaniard, to an oak
tree at the northwest corner ot Main and Co
loma streets. The victims had been arrested
for highway robbery. While being tried by a
jury 01 citizens for this offense, and while it
was doubtful what penalty would be inflicted
on them, an officer from one of the lower coun
ties arrived, in search of the perpetrators of a
horrible murder in his section, and at once
recognized two of them as the murderers foi
whom he sought. This at once settled their
I'fi.te. Death was decreed, and the sentence
carried out iinmecUately at the place and in
the manner mentioned.
No; this place was never what the terse
and terrible name might imply* It was
never "lawless"; thatis.it was never in
the hands of a mob as New York, Chicago,
San Francisco and like places that publish
and sell books of "blood and thunder" about
it have been. The fact is Hangtowii had no
law there then, this banging having been
done in IS4B, and not in 1849. as here set
down. The early miners, and we old ones
still, liked the striking name, for now it
seems nearly half a century of history,
and we will use it to the end. You know
a woman may be so hideously ugly that
she is positively beautiful in her plainness.
So it is with this weird and ghastly name,
which really means nothing ugly to us
old ones.
Ah, me ! ah. me ! if I had only two lives
instead of this flayed and raveled fragment
of and end of one ! And what would I
do? I would, with the best one of them,
go right off to sparkling, sunlit old El
Dorado and there sit down on a bit of the
richest and most generous soil on this
globe and go to work. If I pot out of
bread I would dig it out of a gulch in my
orchard or pasture and t!ien go back again
to work with my vines and fruit trees. I
could and would in only a little time make
a place much prettier than the one where
I have spent the past ten years: for the
soil and climate is many times more giori
ous in El Dorado. All'this land, plenty
of it and close to the road, with natural
water running to waste, is to be had for
the taking. Miles and miles of it almost
ready for t:.e plow; and a soil so deep, as
revealed by the banks of washed-out
mines, practically bottomless. Some such
lands were pointed out to me by the road
side in the seven miles' drive from the old
Marshall millsite of Coloina to Hangtown
— and running water, too. What a place
for healthy, happy homes is dear old El Do
rado to-day. 1 remain,
SOCIETY, A CORRUPTION.
Professional Society Women Parasites
Upon the "World's Heart-Growth.
Mrs. A D. T. Whitney in discussing so
ciety with her girl friends, in December
Ladies' Home Journal, has this stinging
charge to make against modern Society, as
it is spelled with a capital S: "Society as
a pursuit, an end, is a thing without a
soul. The home spirit, from the sharing
of which between home and home it grew,
has departed out of it. It is dead.
It is a corruption. A professional
society woman is a parasite upon the
world's heart-growth; helping, as a mi
crobe of disease, to eat out its vitality.
There is a terrible reaction in the influence
of what we maice society to be, without its
true heart and center. 'It is to blame for
the many confused problems of our time:
it is responsible for the frantic turning of
the world upside down. Conventional
ities, false effort and restriction crowd in
upon and choke out our most beautiful
I and sacred realities. True homes become
i more and more scarce. Society women
abandon them; they make of them mere
arrival and departure stations in the rush
of a whirling round. Women who cannot
or who will not maintain the modern arti
ficial conditions are discouraged and re
pelled from any home-making at ail. They
are forced, through, the very need of their
natures, to outside work and interest for
fellowship; and so there is a great deal
attempted from strong desire for the best
that is yet, in its turn, untrue, one-sided;
adding a fresh derangement to our per
plexed systems and theories — our transi
tional social and political economies."
Tragedy of the Conceited Mouse.
A little mouse once lived under a pantry
where all manner of good things were
stored. He fed so well on these dainties
that he became quite fat and very con
ceited, too, for he thought that the good
things were placed in the pantry for his
especial benefit. "These good people,"
said he, "do all in their power to make me
happy. I, too, can make them happy by
tasting of all the nice things they place
before me." So every night he went regu
larly from dish to disl-, nibbling a little
bit from one and a little bit from another,
until he had nibbled at all the dainties.
One very hot summer's night as he
crept into the pantry ho saw there two tall
white things with beautiful shining bodies.
He didn't know (hat they were only wax
candles; so he gazed in admiration of their
beauty, wondering who or what they could
be.
"Perhaps," said he, "they are the good
people of the house," and as he mused thus
the candles began to bend over with the
heat. "Oh!" said he, "they are bowing to
me!" So he drew himself up proudly and
then bowed stiffly to the candles, while
they bent lower and lower until their
head 3 almost touched their feet. Then
the mouse ran off and began his round of
tasting of the dainties on the dishes.
Well, it happened That he felt very
sleepy that ni^ht, so presently he sat clown
and rested against one of the candles, and
there soon fell fast asleep. Now while he
slept the candle melted with the heat and
dropped upon him until it quite covered
all but his nose; but when the early morn
ing came the air grew chilly and the wax
became hard again, so that the mouse was
held a prisoner in the candle's cold clutch.
At last the mouse awoke and was horri
fied to find that he could not move hand
or foot, for he was completely covered with
hard, cold wax, which held him as firmly
as an iron case.
He squeaked and whimpered, but no
help came; then he cried, "Oh, fool that 1
was to fall into such a trap; my father
has often said. 'Beware of the exalted
when they bend low to the humble.' "
As he said these words a servant entered
the pantry and took npthe candlestick, but
when she saw the mouse's nose she
screamed, and threw the candlestick into
a pail of water, and the poor mouse was
drowned— and that was the sad end of the
conceited little mouse.— R. H. in the New
Budget.
• f •
»; In comparison with population " the
wealth of the United States is by no means
wonderful, the ratio per head being sur
passed in three countries of Europe— Great
Britain, France and Holland.
VENEZUELAN BOUNDARY.
Real and Ultimate Object of
Great Britain's Present
Attitude.
OUR DUTY IN THE PREMISES.
We Must Shut England Out of the
Control of That Rich
Country.
The intimation in the recent dispatches
as to the tenor of Lord Salisbury's reply
to Secretary Olney's proposition to submit
the Venezuelan boundary question to arbi
tration and his refusal to do so causes a
new interest to be/felt in the question and
the probable outcome of the situation.
That Congress will speediiy take some
action indorsing the Monroe doctrine and
making it a principle of our National pol
icy and a vital factor in the consideration
and settlement of this question and all
others that may arise in future seems cer
tain.
It is to be hoped that the administra
tion will awaken to some realization of the
interests involved and vigorously and em
phatically insist on such a settlement as
will secure to our weak sister republic all
the rights and territory that she wrested
from Spain — with none of which has
she ever parted. No verbiage or
profusion of alleged facts of surveys and
explorations or boundary lines run by
British subjects should be allowed to ob
scure the real merits of the question and
cloak Great Britain's purpose in this mat
ter for one moment.
The true bearing of this question on the
future commercial interests of this country
can be clearly seen by any one who will
give it a little consideration, and the tem
per of the American people is to protect
those interests at any cost.
"Always after the great mouth of the
Orinoco" can be truly said to have been the
inspiration of every move that Great
Britain has made and every position she
has taken on the question of tlie boundary
between her province of British Guiana
and the republic of Venezuela. This object
has been kept steadily in view from the
time she first acquired possession of the
three small Dutch colonies lying on the
coast, between the Essequibo and Gorinto
rivers. Spain was the possessor by right
of discovery. The Dutch only held pos
session by sufferance on the part of Spain —
and they could pass no more title to
Great Britain than they held themselves.
And in any case her cession was in no
respect binding on Spain, as she was no
party to the treaty of 1814 and never by
any act o.onlirmed it. nor has Venezuela,
after her, ever conceded a foot of territory
west of the Essequibo River to Great
Britain. No sooner did these colonies,
with their shadow of title, come into the
possession of Great Brirain than began the
series of moves, "Always after the great
mouth of the Orinoco." And this policy
bas< been steadily followed through all the
succeeding years and the various and
changing Ministries that have held the
helm of state in England. Her diplomats,
well trained in the history of her colonial
acquisitions and the art of i«tting time de
velop a small holding into a claim to an
empire, have kept in view during all these
years the golden stream of wealth that
would ultimately flow into her coffers
could phe but make good her foothold on
the great mouth of the Orinoco and so con
trol the future commerce of the tributary
regions. Once tnus established it will take
something more than protests and remon
strances to induce her to withdraw. The
MAP SHOWING THE SITUATION IN VENEZUELA.
control of this river means to Great Britain
the control of a region far greater in ex
tent than her vast Indian empire and far
richer in natural wealth and resources —
a region as large as our Mississippi
Valley, embracing within its borders, in
broad and varied zones, all the ranges of
climate and product to be found in a jour
ney from the sources of the Nile to tho
Arctic Ocean. It means the control of
200.000 square leagues of the best watered
and most fertile country in the world— a
country whose soil is still virgin and its
rich and varied resources practically un
touched.
The control of the Orinoco means the
control of the development of this vast
empire and centuries, maybe, of continued
and increasing wealth to be skimmed from
the deep and broad stream of trade that
in time will flow from this region through
this its natural gateway.
The Orinoco ia a much more important
stream from a commercial point of view
than its neighbor the Amazon.
The latter for nearly 3000 miles runs under
the same parallel of latitude and with little
difference of altitude and consequently
little difference of products to stimulate
trade between different points along its
course as in case of our Mississippi. Its
broad mouth, 150 miles wide, and the
position and direction of the stream in re
lation to the ocean tidal wave form a great
hindrance to safe navigation, to say
nothing of the uninhabitable character of
its "silvas," which stretch from its mouth
nearly to the borders of Peru. With the
Orinoco it is very different. It presents
few if any obstacles to navigation from its
month to its junction with the Cassiquian
River, near 1600 miles. It receives from
the we=>t a broad sheet of affluents that
take their rise almost with?n sight of the
Pacific Ocean, giving the broad and fertile
regions which they drain easy access to the
Atlantic.
By the Cassiquian the Orinoco is con
nected with the liio Negro, one of the
largest tributaries of the Amazon, and
other streams that make up the 30,000
miles of navigable water in the Amazon
Valley.
The Cassiquian is 160 miles long and as
broad as the Rhine. Though now lying
useless, as it were, between and connecting
these great river basins, it is destined in
time to play as important a part in the
commerce of the world as the Suez canal
now does. Boats descending the tributaries
of the Amazon from the very Pacific coasts
of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia
will find a ready exit with their freights to
the Atlantic through the Rio Negro, the
Cassiquian and the Orinoco rivers.
The trade of th is region naturally belongs
to the United States, and the Caribbean
Sea and the Gulf of Mexico form the only
inland body of water on the Western con
tinent — barring Hudson Bay — and this
inland sea is bound to play as great a part
in the future history and progress of civ
ilization as the Mediterranean has done in
the past. Bordering its shores on the north
we have our own country, on the south
this vast and rich Amazon-Orinoco region
•—the two brought into close connection by
the Mississippi and Orinoco rivers.
The difference in people and products
will exercise a mutually happy influence
on the commercial industries and develop
ment of the two regions and their trade
relations, and stimulate their growth in
population. Great Britain has long had
this in view and placed upon it a value
which constitutes no small factor in her
calculations as to the importance of the
control of Venezuela's great river. She
lost the control of the Mississippi and the
empire behind it. Here she can repair
her one great mistake.
The trade and commerce of a country
ten times as large as Spain, enriched by
the greatest variety of products, both veg
etable and mineral, watered in every direc
tion by navigable rivers, capable of sus
taining four times the population of
Europe, is by means of the Cassiquian
and Orinoco rivers made tributary to the
power that controls the mouth of the Ori
noco.
That control belongs to Venezuela and
to ensure her in the full exercise and en
joyment thereof is the province and high
privilege as well as the duty of the United
States.
The people of this country demand that
it be done. Let the Monroe doctrine be
made by Congress a living principle and
let the administration enforce it to the
letter at any cost. A. L. McDonald.
THE BARON AND LIEUTENANT.
A Story of American Independence and
Official Etiquette.
The Washington Capital publishes the
following story of Lieutenant Lucien
Young, the naval officer who is not per
mitted to publish his book on Hawaii,
because it is considered to reflect on the
record of the Cleveland administration.
Tht; scene of the present incident is laid
during the Harrison regime, when Benja
min P. Tracy was Secretary of the Navy.
It was Lieutenant Young, according to
the story, who a few years ago offered to
teach Baron Fava, the Italian Embassa
dor, a lesson in American man ners. The
international episode was the request
made by the Embassador to the Secretary
of the Navy for a report upon a subject of
great importance to him, which he begged
might be delivered the same evening, in
order that he could forward it to his Gov
ernment in the morning mail. Lieutenant
Young was detailed to prepare the
information. He worked all dsy and
all the evening, witli only a sandwich
and a cup of coffee, excused himself
from a dinner party and from an engage
ment he had made to take some ladies to a
ball. The memorandum wa3 completed
about midnight, when he got a cab and
drove to the Italian legation. It was closed
and dark, and no one answered his sum
mons. Then he went to Baron Fava's
residence, where he was told that the
Embassador was dining out. He went to
the house where the dinner had been given
and learned that the Baron was at the ball
which he himself wanted to attend, but
found there the Baron had left a few min
utes before.
Then Young gave up the search and
went to his club*. The first man he saw
after entering the door was the Italian
Embassador drinking wine with a party
of friends. Lieutenant Young approached
him with a proper salute and, after a few
words of explanation, offered him the.
papers. The Baron hau-htily declined
them.
"You impertinent fellow," said he;
"why did you follow me all over the town?
I am the Embassador of Italy, and I do
my business at the legation of my Gov
ernment. You should have had the
papers there before I left this afternoon.
Instead of that you disturb my friends by
entering their houses and intrude upon
my club. I will report your impertinence
to the Secretary of the Navy to-morrow."
The sea dog from Kentucky was very red
in the face by this time, and made the fol
lowing remarks:
"You ungrateful old macaroni-chewing
monkey tamer, I am a member of this club
and you are only a guest, but if you will
come out into the' street for five minutes I
will teach you a lesson in North American
manners. There are the papers I have
spent fifteen hours in preparing for you,"
and be threw them on the table. "You
can take them or leave them, as you like."
The Baron called upon Secretary Tracy
the next day and complained that Lieuten
ant Young 'had insulted him. The Secre
tary sent for the offender, who related the
affair as I have told it, including the bene
diction he had pronounced. The Sec
retary had pressing business in the next
room for a few moments and when he
recovered himself asked what the Em
bassador had to suggest. Baron Fava de
manded that the lieutenant be repri
manded.
"Consider yourself reprimanded," said
the» Secretary gravely, and Lieutenant
Young bowed and left the room.
The English newspapers are circulating
the report that it cost 20 per cent more to
build the steamers St. Louis and St. Paul
than the price of the New York and Paris,
built in Glasgow.
THE STRANGE EXPERIENCES
OF A NIGHT OF BURGLARIES.
BY "W. O. MOR,:R,O"W.
If there are those inclined to doubt the
probability of the following story, told to
me as the truth by an eminent and trust
worthy gentleman of San Francisco, they
have yet to learn and comprehend some of
the most vital things of life. He said
to me :
A few summers ago my family left town
to spend some weeks in the country. I
gave the servants a vacation and arranged
jto stay alone at my house. For a change
I had a bed placed in the drawing-room,
which was in the front of the house on the
lower floor. On one side of this room'was
the vestibule, into which the outer door
i opened, and on the other an exterior pas
! sage which opened upon the street through
| a gate, and which ran back alongside the
house to the rear of the premises. It was
paved with boards, some of which had
j worn slightly loose. The gate was closed
with an ordinary lift latch.
We had lived in the house a number of
years, but I had never slept in that room
before. The front of the room was taken
up with a bay-window, which was fur
| nished on the inside with ordinary slat
j blinds. My bed was placed at the oppo
! site end of the room, against the sliding
| doors.
I had arranged to take my meals down
town. On the first evening of my solitary
occupancy I returned to the house shortly
after dinner and read in my improvised
bedroom till 10 o'clock. Then I pulled
down one of the upper sashes of the win
dow, closed the blinds and went to bed.
Ordinarily I would fall quickly asleep
on retiring, but the novelty of my position,
and perhaps some business anxieties, kept
me awake for an hour or two. This wor
ried me and made me nervous. The still
ness of midnight came on, but still I re
mained awake. It was while I was lying
in this state that I heard the latch of the
gate opening into the side passage cau
tiously raised, then some one step softly
within, leaving the gate open, and then
footfalls proceeding stealthily down the
passage toward the rear of the house, caus
ing a loose board here and there to squeak.
I listened with the most eager and
strained alertness, for my immediate con
clusion was that a burglar, perhaps having
observed the departure of the family a*nd
assumed that the house had been tempo
rarily deserted, had come to plunder the
place. I heard him try and then abandon
the securely barred door opening from the
rear porch upon the passage.
A lattice extended from the lower rear
porch to the upper. Without moving I
heard the intruder slowly but nimbly scale
the lattice and step upon the floor of the
upper porch. A hall door and a bed
chamber window both opened upon this
porch, and I was curious to note whicn the
burglar would attack, and began to wonder
if they had been locked.
He chose the window. I heard the sash
lock snap under the pressure of his cold
chisel. After a pause he stepped into the
room and proceeded to'ransack it. It was
my wife's room, and although I knew that
she had provided elsewhere for the safe
care of her furs and other more valuable
clothes. I reflected that there must have
been left a number of things which a bnrglar
might think worthy of attention. I heard
him strip a blanket from the bed, spread
it upon the floor and proceed to pile upon
it the plunder which he found in the
trunks, chiffoniers, closets and the like.
Then he stepped to the open door inxp the
passage and stood listening a moment.
These occurrences had a surprising effect
upon my nerves. The door between my
temporary bedroom and the vestibule was
open fpr ventilation, and I realized that I
was almost in physical touch with a
man, who would not hesitate to kill
me should that prove necessary to his
safety. I knew that sooner or later he
would descend the stairs, at the foot of
which WBS the open door of my room. It
would not have been difficult for me to
waylay him and make an effort to cripple
or kill him in the darkness with one of a
dozen convenient articles which I remem
bered were in the room, including a heavy
poker, some bronze statuettes, chairs,
stools and the like. Ordinarily, as you
are aware, I am not a timid man, but I tell
yon now that an unaccountable fear as
sailed me and held me a prisoner. It re
quires a good deal of candor to make that
admission, but it is necessary to a com
plete understanding of this remarkable ex
perience.
After standing in a listening attitude a
moment the burglar slowly and cautiously
descended the stairs and, as I expected, left
my room alone and proceeded to the
dining-room. I knew that the solid silver
ware had been sent away for safe keeping,
and so I was not surprised when the
burglar, after handling the plated-ware
which he found and making it tinkle
softly and gently, left it, made an un
profitable search of other rooms and then
returned to the foot of the stairs. This
1 brought him again to my door. He
paused on the threshold, listened in silence
a moment and then started upstairs. In
that moment I suffered such a reasonless
agony of terror as cannot be explained on
ordinary grounds. I held my breath till I
was nearly suffocated, and when the man
turned to leave I was cold to the marrow.
He reascended the stairs, tied up his
bundle, passed through the window and
closed it, dropped the parcel over the rail,
clambered down the lattice and went away
as he had come, shutting the gate behind
him.
I felt intensely relieved when he had
gone, and a reaction set in that composed
my nerves for slumber. Drowsiness was
already approaching when I was startled
by the soft clicking of the gate-latch. It
was very unlikely that the same burglar
had returned and would have been extra
ordinary if another nad come. And yet,
try as hard as I might to reason out some
other possibility, there came the stealthy
footstep of a thief on the boards of the
outer passage. I studied this step so
intently and analytically that I was certain
the intruder was not the same as the first.
Then I began to wonder what he would do.
I was not surprised to hear him try the
door of the lower y>orch and land it stronely
barred within, nor greatly to hear him
climb the lattice as the other had done. I
was curious to know whether he would
attack the door or the window after he had
landed on the porch. By a singular
coincidence he chose the window. I beard
him try it, and imagined that he started
upon discovering hat the latch had been
broken. It was evident that upon entering
the room he was surprised and confused
to see its disorder. But he drew a sheet
from the bed, spread it on the floor and
proceeded to ransack the room. Evidently
his bewilderment increased, and he must
nave been discouraged to find so little
worth taking.
He was not long in completing the loot
ing of the room, and then he went to the
door and stood a moment in the passage,
listening intently. After that he began
carefully to descend the stairs. His con
duct thenceforward was exactly a repeti
tion of his predecessor's. He passed my
door, tinkled the plated silverware in the
dining-room, left it alone, returned to the
vestibule, stood a moment listening at my
open door, cautiously retraced his steps
upstairs, passed through the window,
closed it, dropped his parcel to the ground,
clambered down the lattice and passed out,
closing the gate benind him.
It may be supposed that the coincidencea
amazed me beyond measure. This, more
than anything else, seemed to unnerve me
all the more. All this time I realized that
I had been acting the part of a coward.
Merely to have lighted the gas in my room
would have cleared the house of the second
burglar, but I had not the courage to do
that.
My alarm and nervousness became so
great that I arose from bed and was just
about to strike a match with which to
light thf gas in the chandelier when I
heard the gate-latch click for the third
time. My match remained unstruck and
I listened with a fascinated intentness to
this last invasion. In all particulars it
was identical with the second, down to the
point when the burglar descended the
stairs and passed my open door on his way
to the dining-room. To light the gas then
would have been to place the man in a
corner and compel him to light. I real
ized not only that it is taking one's life in
one's hands to cut off a burglar's retreat
before attacking him (as a knowledge of a
chance to escape diverts his attention from
the necessity for self-defense ana renders
him easier to overcome), but that I was
now in a condition in which I lacked both
the courage and the strength to make the
attempt.
The position which I now occupied in
the room was half way between the bed
and the window. As I was so much nearer
the window than before I could hear
sounds from without with much more dis
tinctness. While I stood there listening
to the third burglar tinkle the plated
ware I was startled to hear the gate-latch
click again and the footfall of the fourth
burglar on the board-paved passage. As
he was climbing the lattice a fifth burglar
entered the gate, then a sixth, then others,
until burglars in an endless procession
were entering my premises and rifling my
house on one common and unvarying
plan.
It is useless to say that an intelligent
man should not have entertained such an
idea for a moment. We know I might
have reasoned that perhaps there had
been only one, or at most two, burglars
after all, and that the fright which they
gave me caused me to conjure. up the
others from a fear-deranged imagination.
It might be profitable to indulge in a great
many other speculations on this subject,
but the truth remains that I could not
reason at all.
In simple desperation, perhaps moved
by a sort of fascination, I crept to the
window in order to observe with idle curi
osity the procession of burglars entering
the gate. I turned the slats of a lower
blind and looked out. Not a soul was
visible, and yet burglars were still pouring
through the gate!
The explanation came like a shocking
revelation. The wind was playing with
some loose blind-slats immediately above
my head as I stood there, and out of that
slight and varying sound my imagination
had constructed the phantasy from begin
ning to end. No burglar at all had in
vaded my house. I amused and teased
myself for some time afterward by com
pelling my attention to leave the rattling
slats at intervals and fill my house with
burglars.
BROWN STOUT FOR A SICK HORSE
The Curious Diet Ordered for an Army
Equine in India.
London Truth.
The following order has just been issued
at one of the India stations :
Rations— No. 312— 0n the recommendation
of the veterinary officer in charge Twenty
seventh F. B. R. A., and in accordance with
paragraph 856, A. R. 1., vol. v. commissariat,
the officer commanding the station sanctions
the issue of extra diet, as under, to horse 69
for seven days, commencing from the 18th
inst.: Two gallons milk, twelve eggs, three
bottles of stout (imperial quart).
"Who wouldn't be a Royal Artillery
horse?" asks the warrior who sends me
this item, and one can understand
Tommy's feelings under the circum
stances.
Hands and Feet.
"My dear fellow," said a society woman
of great candor to an awkward, timid
young Harvard graduate whom she was
to present, "you have any amount of
talent, you have position, you have money,
but you will never be at your ease, never
show at your best, until you know what to
do with your hands and feet. You must
lose them, forget them, be unconscious of
them."— New Orleans Times-Democrat.
15