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eciai. - The Flying Machine Gives the Sign of Its Birth . Romances of the Lost and Found . . .
The Pranks of Lightning
“The” Allen, “The Wickedest Man in New York” .
The Comédie Humaine of the Recruiting Station The vg pelea of the Battle-Ship
Odd Things That the Chinaman’s Laws Make Him Do =
a: ae = ae ~ very otranger jogged in t etersburg : Strange Places for Wedding Ceremonies An Old-Time “Sun” Reporter's Story A Graveyard 4,000 Miles Long « ; _The ening of Sam Brown ,
-
Tie Scare The Burning Tage . By Dead Reckoning
The Spy .
On the rans Road. :
In the Path of the Avenger An Heiress of the Area. .
Voices of the Night. . a
“ Rocks” Shangliss, Gambler .
People’s Money . : Permission of the Butler
The Copy of the Cameo .
eee)
Se
eh
An Art-Full Lay.
Y | Tim Tumbler
ARBRSLOLES.
SERLALS:;
SHORT STG RIES.
POETRY.
=
. . Edwin Morris . « . . Izola Forrester. . Harold Boles eS eis c bag’ illets . John R. Spears Dr. W. H. Curtiss. Matthew White, Jr. Francis L. Ashford . Bacon W. W. Austin eS Raymond S, Spears . 5e Eliot: Lord.2==<-;
Amold P. Wiswtiniarase: Crittenden Marriott. Walter Hackett . .
sae News 5
aymon 5 a Herman ‘Scheme < Ee Fis ye S Hanshew ea
= sae Francis Bourke .
~ oe P. Mulvane
2 & Boat ee
. Freeman Putney, Jr.
John S. Lopez as .
Edith Livingston Smith . Clark Hinman . wie
MISCELLANEOUS,
6 18 22 23
30 43
_ If We Should Meet Another World .
Try This, If You Think It’s Easy .
A Land Without Orphans ear
Lost ? Not “ Fat Head's’ Money! . . .
William Tell? Who Said He ae So -
Much? . . :
The Soft Answer Wins. .
What Did the Editor Say?. _. z
in Good Does Education Do es
; Dollar Bills Worth Their Weight in Gold Yes, Dinner’s Almost Ready ;
Why Not Try a Gift Cigar ? ta
Sure! Take it Easy, This Can't Law.
Certainly Not. The Lady’s Mistaken.
Gates Loses Money; Bell-Boys Get It .
_ Pa’s Got a Sure-Enough Bite
= Has — Since Trilby’ ‘<The
Fires = Never C Go Out ;
Good-Natured Caricatures of Well Known
¢ People’... aaa
No Danes Allowed |;
A Clerk Who Is Paid Not to Work |
What Makes Men Happy?
ees Syeda .
ell Hang Up a Loaf of Bread,
Obedience in As Orient . Net.
The Old Lady Gets Real
Dinner at $100 a Plate .
Well, Can You Beat That! .
She Tears Up Money .-
However, the Laugh’s on Bill | ;
What Could the Poor Lady Do?
Origin of ee Soufflées
From the Country Press
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Money—Almost
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AUGUSTE,
1908.
GIVES THE SIGN OF ITS BIRTH
: - THAT ALL GREAT INVENTIONS GIVE
= BY EDWIN MORRIS.
HE year was 1713. A boy, whose name
is recorded in history as Humphrey
Potter, stood beside a steam-engine.
His task was to open and shut a
valve, letting steam into one end of the cylin-
3 der and, after it had done its work, letting = it out again.
= This English lad had that rare attribute of
mind that is known as imagination. The
a= more he thought about it, the more it seemed
to him as if there must be an easier way .to
let steam in and out of a cylinder. So he
fastened a cord to the walking-beam to
=e which the piston was attached, and the cord
did the work that he had been doing. = Men had been working on steam-engines - since one hundred and thirty years before
Christ, but this lad’s simple device brought —
the invention a long step nearer perfection ver been before. Yet the steam- it then was in n idea, 1 was ot
of practically no commercial value. It had evidently occurred to no one to use it to turn a wheel. Steam was admitted into only one end of the cylinder and the engine served no other purpose than to pump water in pon- derous, cumbersome ‘fashion.
In 1763, James Watt, an instrument-maker of Glasgow, put a fly-wheel on one end of a shaft, a crank on the other, let steam into both ends of the cylinder instead of only one end, and the steam-engine leaped into being at a bound.
After all the weary centuries of waiting,
Watt had discovered the fundamental prin-
ciples that underlie the translation of pent-— up steam into controlled, commercially valu- able mechanical action.
~ That is the way with all inventions that —
to the Doint — yo correct eo ee
amount to anything—they develop slowly up —
THE
_ forward with a rush. Never has there been an exception. :
The telegraph cobwebbed the world in a few years after Morse struck the right com- _ bination.
The locomotive, the telephone, the elec- _tric-light and the automobile came the same
way. = 5 ag
And that is the way the flying-machine is
coming. — ; - More than that, the sign is present that the flying-machine has passed through what
might be called the floundering-in-the-dark -
period and now stands where the steam- engine stood when Watt put a crank and a fly-wheel on it.
If so, the flying-machine may be expected to develop in the next ten years as rapidly as the automobile has in the last decade—and even school children can almost remember the time when “horseless carriages ” were made out of buggy-boxes, wire-spoked wheels, solid rubber tires, and one-cylinder engines.
That would be coming pretty fast, of course. But look over the record of the three centuries during which man has been
trying to fly and see if the flying-machine _
idea has not reached the fast-moving stage. Here is the record:
Seventeenth century—An Italian al- chemist under the patronage of King James IV made a pair of wings and
~ tried to fly from Scotland to France. Thigh broken in four places and col- lar-bone fractured.
A LOCOMOTIVE WITH. IEGS TO PUSH IT
LIVE WIRE.
aoe, CON OU
; poe nero : ES h | NEWCOMEN'S eh 8 || ATMOSPHERIC
Eighteenth century—The Montgol- « fier brothers, of France; invented the
balloon. Inflated first with hot air and smoke. Gas finally used. Many ascensions made in Europe and Amer- ica.
Nineteenth century—No during the first decades. dred-year-old balloon still the only means of navigating the air. Various devices for steering gas-bags threugh the air tried and abandoned. Another inventor tried a big screw propeller driven by man-power. No good.
THEN:
Dr. Samuel P. Langley, American scientist, secretary of the Smithson-— ian Institution, in the last hours of the nineteenth century came forward with a new idea. He said that all the work of the last three hundred years had been wrong; that a_flying-ma- chine to be successful must not be ~ lighter than air, but heavier; that it~ must consist of broad, inclined sur- faces, driven against the air at great speed.
progress The hun- ~
AW
Like many another new idea, Langley’s. suggestion was pooh-poohed. The old dirig- ible-balloon scientists were sorry that he had made so great a mistake. ‘The newspapers ridiculed his theory. And, unforttinately for the peace of Langley’s last years, his air-ship plunged into the Potomac River gn what
STEPHENSON'S ROCKET -1829
| ESSAeS
4 a - i }
Soy by
Sy
a ; =
_ THE FLYING-MACHINE
oem ‘SS:
was to have been its triumphant flight. This mishap scared off financial backers. Langley sickened and died.
It will be recalled that Columbus also died without knowing that he had discovered a new world. And Langley, in his grave, his ait-ship a wreck at the bottom of.the Po- tomac, had nevertheless given the world an idea that was becoming more alive every
minute. Inventors. everywhere suddenly saw the basic truth of his thought. A bird is heavier than air. So is a kite. These are
the only two things that man knows that fly.
So why shouldn't a flying-machine be heavier than air?
The aeronautical part of the scientific world gradually began to turn toward Lang- ley’s idea. And the startling fact is that from that moment men began to fly. In America, in France, in England, in Italy, in Germany—wherever Langley’s idea of the aeroplane was tried—remarkable results were obtained. Almost every flight established a new record. That which was regarded as impossible one year was done with ease the next. And the upshot of it all is that the Wright brothers, of Dayton, Ohio, are under “contract to turn over to the United States government the last of this month a flying- machine that will remain in the air at least an hour, carry two persons whose combined weight shall be three hundred and fifty pounds, and also have enough fuel aboard to make a flight of one hundred and twenty- five miles.
Yet, startling as are these conditions, the
Wright brothers declare they have a machine that can more than fulfil them. They say they have already traveled thirty-two miles in forty minutes, and could have gone far- ther if it had seemed desirable, all things considered, to do so.
While the Wright brothers were giving such remarkable exhibitions at Kill Devil, North Carolina, last May, Henry Farman,
of England, was making almost as wonder-—
ful flights in Belgium, and Leon Delagrange, a French aeroplanist, was flying long dis- tances over Rome. Farman won a wager made a few months before that within a year he would build an aeroplane that would — fly four thousand and thirty-three feet with two men aboard, Delagrange made fifteen
flights over Rome in one day. On the last~
trip he traveled six miles.
And all this in th8 face of the fact that —
fifteen years ago they were still flying the balloons that were invented in the eight- eenth century! :
Do not such results seem to justify the
conclusion that the basic principles of aerial —
flight have been discovered?
And what are those principles? Perhaps this is a simple way of explaining them:
Take a kite, tie a string to it, and fling it into the wind. The kite flies. Why? The string holds the face of the kite at an angle against the moving air. The kite, prevented by the string from moving in the same direc- tion as the. wind, moves in the direction of the least resistance—upward.
Reverse most of these conditions and you
—" —
we eS ——_
GIVES THE SIGN OF ITS BIRTH, 3
es iar
have a flying-machine. Here you have the machine moving against the wind instead of the wind moving against the kite. You hhaye the engines of the machine jamming it - against the air, instead of the, kite’s string holding it against the wind. And whereas the kite stands still, so far as moving with the wind is concerned, the flying-machine moves -swhile the air stands still.
- Putting it in- still another way, the air blows against a kite, and a flying-machine is blown against the air. - rapidly enough assumes something of the nature of a solid—that’s what lifts the kite. -.. Hit the air hard enough and it assumes something of the nature of a solid—that’s cae ~ what makes the aeroplane fly. Bee _ The wings of an aeroplane in flight tend to ~ compress the air between the wings and the earth. Compressed air will support weight. ‘Thus, an aeroplane is a machine for com- ‘pressing the air under it and floating on its
surface.
That’s what a hawk does when it flaps its wings. And when the hawk “floats” with extended, motionless wings, it is becatse its weight compresses the air as it blows against the bird’s slanting wings. In flying, the air- compression is only momentary, and must be renewed with uninterrupted wing-flapping. In floating there need be no wing-flapping, but the wind must keep blowing—wedging itself, as it were, between the earth and the
_pird’s slanting wings.
Thus it will be seen that the Italian al-
chemist who strapped wings to his shoulders,
Air that is moving -
‘AN ITALIAN AUTOMOBILE. OF SIXTY YEARS AGO
af
and tried to fly from Scotland to France, was really on the right track—he had a heavier-than-air machine. His difficulty lay in the fact that his wings were not large enough to compress sufficient air to support his weight, while if they had been he would have lacked power to operate them. The modern aeroplane, with its huge inclined sur- faces and gasoline engines, remedies these
two defects. =
When the idea was first conceived of using mechanical power to accomplish aerial flight, the success of the undertaking was all but despaired of because of the great weight of the engines. But with the perfection of the gasoline engine this difficulty has been re- moved. Requiring neither boiler nor much. fuel, the gasoline motors now used in flying- machines weigh only two and three-tenths pounds to each horse-power. The Wright brothers, in their latest machine, use an engine that develops thirty horse-power and weighs sixty-six pounds.
With the question of power out of the way, only two problems remain to puzzle the aver- age flying-machine man—how to balance the machine in varying air-currents and how to keep the engine cool. The Wright brothers appear to have solved even these perplexities more or less satisfactorily, though no one except themselves yet definitely knows by what means they have done*so.
Gasoline engines, with their rapid explo- sions of gas in the cylinders, quickly become heated unless means are taken to keep, them
cool. Many a flight has been stopped in five -
Seti
_ ther operation was impossible.
AN AMERICAN (Y AUTOMOBILE Ny
- OF 1896
ass ae)
minutes because the temperature of the cylin- der had been raised to such a point that fur- With auto- mobiles the engines are kept cool by the cir- culation of cold water through coils of pipes. But this requires a considerable weight of
water—weight that the average flying-ma- ‘chine has not, up to this time, been able to
carry.
The difficulty of balancing is a greater problem, however, than that of cooling the engines. Both the direction and the intensity with which the air blows are constantly changing. Furthermore, aeronauts. have learned from experience that at any moment they are likely to run into what they call “holes” in the atmosphere. Columns of air seem to be rushing downward with a whirl- ing’ motion, just as water in a washbowl eddies and curls when the plug is pulled out of the bottom of the basin. Balloons, on such occasions, fall rapidly, even though all the ballast be thrown overboard.
When a flying-machine runs into sttch a “hole” the first thing the operator must do, of course, is to drive his machine through it and get into the settled air. This is not difficult, but the trouble arises in causing the machine to regain its balance after passing over the rough place.
Until the Wrights devised their later ma- chines, it was the custom of operators, both here and abroad, to accomplish the balancing feat by shifting the weight of their own bodies from side to side, much as a bicylist maintains the equilibrium of his wheel. But
AP
SS nHORAL SUE
| lh i ica mI
“SANTOS DUMONTS DIRIGIBLE BALLOON - 1901
AUTOMOBILE.
the Wright brothers are now said to have invented a contrivance that automatically ad- justs their machine to the varying condi- tions of the-air. ; Probably the mechanism, whatever it may be, changes the slant at which some of the planes stand to the wind, much as a hawk
adjusts its wings to the breeze when it is
balancing in the air. Summed up in a, nutshell then, the flying- machine situation is this:
Power-driven machines that are — heavier than air can: fly. :
The Wright brothers have a ma- chine in which they have flown thirty- two miles in forty minutes.
Then these questions arise:
If it is already possible by means of mechanical power to raise an air- ship from the earth, keep it in the air forty minutes during which time it travels thirty-two miles, is it not reasonable to assume that at last the correct principles that underlie aerial flight have been discovered?
And is it not within the bounds of probability that the _ flying-machine will be developed and improved as rapidly as were the locomotive, the telegraph, the telephone, and the automobile?
The last question was asked of E. L, Jones, editor of Aeronautics, a New York
6 THE LIVE WIRE. ’ se
magazine that is devoted to the science of navigating the air. Mr. Jones, in replying, used the development of the automobile as an illustration. The automobile, in 1895, was, to all intents and purposes, unknown. Occasionally a “horseless-carriage” ap- peared in the streets, coughing, sputtering, and stopping. Owing to the development of high-power light-weight engines, automo- biles -within six years became not only things of beauty, but as common in cities and eS as trucks.
. Jones said that present indications ote to the conclusion that within ten years flying-machines will be sufficiently numerous to attract no more attention than does a steam yacht on the Hudson. In his opinion, the flying-machine for some time to come will be the rich man’s toy, carrying him to and from his office perhaps, or to such places of pleasure as he may choose.
What the flying-machine. may eventually come to be no one of course now knows, but Mr. Jones sees no present prospect that it will ever compete with trains and ocean liners. This is because the doubling of the weight of a flying-machine necessitates the increasing of the power something like eight times. Bigger engines mean more fuel.
Therefore, unless future invention shall stirmount these barriers, flying-machines will confine their operations to carrying probably not more than eight or ten persons. The flights may reach a thousand miles—or per- haps the continent may be crossed by stop- ping every few hundred miles for fuel—but it does not seem likely that there will be any “air-ship expresses’’ consisting of huge cars, each carrying a train-load of human beings.
Mr. Jones is also of the opinion that the public has an exaggerated idea of what the flying-machine may accomplish in the line of speed, The popular idea is that aerial travet-
ers may some day go whizzing through the air at the rate of one hundred or two hun- dred miles an hour.
Mr. Jones believes the correct figures are more likely to be found between forty and seventy-five. He is not sure—no one can be. At the birth of a really great invention no one has ever yet dreamed wildly enough to picture half that it was destined to accom- plish. Daniel Webster thought that locomio- tives would never amount to anything. He said that once tinder way, they could not be stopped—that they would run off the track at the end of the line, wreck the station, and. kill everybody aboard. Morse never suspect- ed that telegrams would be sent from mid- ocean without the aid of wires. Edison, himself, could hardly have realized, when he invented the electric-light, all that it was to become.
It may be so with the flying-machine— the new, strange thing that, hatched in the brain of Langley, has been developed and at last cast into the winds by the Wrights. Per- haps it will yet fly one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles an hour as Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, last summer said it would. Maybe it will carry a hundred passengers instead of ten. Pos- sibly it will cros§ oceans and continents in single flights. These things can be deter- mined only by the future.
But this we now know:
After three hundred years of futile effort, man can fly!
“Fly”—that’s. the word. The day of floating on gas bags is past. Man goes aloft and afar as a bird goes—under power that he himself controls, in the direction that pleases him best, and, within wide limits, at such velocity as he wills.
Surely the air is joining the land and the water in coming under= the dominion of human beings.
IF WE SHOULD MEET ANOTHER WORLD.
E are spinning through space at the rate of more than a thousand miles a min- ute. another world moving at the same speed? In the first place, the heat generated by the shock would be so great that both worlds would be transformed into gigantic balls of vapor many times the size of the earth to- day. the inside of the earth is composed of solider and colder matter than scientists be- lieve it to be. Although there is small chance of any such aerial collision taking place, scientists have
What would happen were we to meet |
This, however, might not happen if-
already calculated the probable results fairly accurately. One has expressed the amount of heat that would be generated in this way. It would be sufficient; he says, to melt, boil, and completely vaporize a mass of ice seven hundred times the bulk of both the colliding worlds—an ice planet one hundred and fifty thousand miles in diameter. x
Scientists have often corisidered the pos- sibility that the end of the earth would
®come about in this way.
Certain it is that planets as great as the earth have been destroyed by coming into collision with other huge bodies.
Jong
N the principal room of a rude cottage on the outskirts of the city of Moscow, seven men sat around a table. Though the one wretched candle flickered and
flared, there was, nevertheless, sufficient light to reveal their faces.
For the most part, they were wretchedly dressed in the ordinary garb of Russian peasants, and their hair and beards were and unkempt. There was nothing
“about them to indicate to the casual ob-
Y
about the table,
remarked in his gentle voice.
server the possession of any unustial amount of intelligence, and yet the doings of that little band held an entire government in terror.
Safe behind his palace gates, the mighty Czar of All the Russias turned pale at the mention of their names, and trembled at the very thought of them. These men were the head of the Terrorist Revolutionary
Party of Russia.
For a long time they had sat in silence I steadily staring at the candle in the center. No one, indeed, seemed aware of another’s presence, and it was not until their leader spoke that any of them made the least movement.
He was a slight, boyish little man, this
leader, with a face fair as a girl’s and a _ voice as gentle as a woman.
possible to believe that it was this boy who had inspired a hundred assassinations and
who had ‘spread throughout official Russia a terror stich as was never known before. g as well face the truth,” he
“We migh' a SOrer nets
Tt seemed 1m-.
was impossible.
there is a spy among us. Somewhere there is a traitor who knows our secrets and mee trays them to the government.
“That is why we have persistently failed: That is why our efforts are always fore- stalled. Had it not been for this one man, long ago the Russian Republic would have been a fact. Some day I hope to learn his name.” S
He did not raise his voice. It was as gentle as ever, yet at the final statement every person at the table shuddered. Tt was strange to see the burly, stalwart men tremble before this slender boy with the tender voice and melancholy eye.
“ We are now,” he continued, “in:the last ditch. To-morrow we must play our last card. The Czar arrives from St. Peters- _ burg at noon, and on his way to the palace — from the railroad station he must die.
“Beaten though we have been, we shall be beaten no longer. To-morrow sees the dawn of hope for Russia.” =
The words had scarcely left his lips, when the one door of the room was thrown violently open and a white-faced man leaped in among them.
“The police!” - “They are upon us.’
‘Not a soul spoke.
he exclaimed hoarsely.
A tense silence greeted
the man’s announcement, though every one
in the room leaped to their feet and stood staring at their comrades with wide eyes and faces white with fear. All knew that escape
in a trap. = Only the leader: retained his ‘composure.
‘With the utmost calmness he rolled and : =
_lighted a SIaSEOLS and then stood wa iti
ng. =
They were caught like rats 3
> men.
— ‘THE LIVE WIRE.
+
It was not for long. Almost upon the heels of the man who brought the evil tidings, there came from outside the tramp of feet and the rattle of swords. Then the door was once more thrown open and there appeared a man dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant of police.
“You are under arrest,’ he announced crisply, “ in the name of the Czar.”
The room seemed fairly filled with his There were at least twenty.of them,
‘many armed with rifles. In silence that - was deadly, they took the prisoners with the
calm precision of a well-ordered plan and
lined them against the mud wall of the bare room. Then the lieutenant turned to the men with the rifles.
“Get ready,” he ordered.
Without a word, his subordinates took up their position on the other side of the room. Then for the first time since the arrival of the police, the leader of the prisoners spoke:
so TS it permitted to ask,” he inquired gently, “what is the meaning of this
extraordinary procedure ? ” 2
The officer in charge of the men turned on him roughly. z
“Tt means that I’m going to haye you all shot, here and now.’
To this the leader made no reply. Shrug- ging his shoulders, he went on smoking his cigarette placidly.
The officer turned to his men.
“Prepare to shoot,” he ordered. Aim!”
Slowly the policemen raised their rifles until each covered the heart of one of the helpless men facing them. Then followed a terrible pause. How long it was, no man who lived through it could ever say, but not one of those in the room that night ever thought of it again without a shudder.
“Fi—” the fatal word was about to drop from the lieutenant’s lips, when a ery, shrill and terrible, rang through the room. It came from the mouth of one of the conspir- ators against the wall, a tall, broad-shoul- dered man with a heavily-bearded face.
“Wait!” he cried. “ Wait!”
As he uttered the words, he sprang for- ward and caught the lieutenant by the arm.
“Vou must not let them shoot me!” he
_ screamed, falling on his knees. “You must not! I am Zubeloff of the third section.
It is 1 who have kept you informed of these
men’s movements. It is I who gave in-
formation of their attempt upon the Czar’s life to-morrow and advised arresting them to-night, For Heaven’s sake, don’t shoot me!” -
At last!”
It was the leader of the Terrorists who spoke, and though the words were uttered scarcely above a wnispes, they rang through
the room more clearly than the other’s scream of terror.
“ At last,” he purred, “we have found out who the spy is.”
Before the astonished spy could speak or move, he found himself set upon by the men he had believed his allies, bound and gagged. He had been caught at last by a trick so simple that it would scarcely have deceived a child.
Even in his blind terror, as he watched the pseudo-police following the directions of the leader of the Terrorists, he realized this, and his heart grew hot with hate. Securely bound, he was thrown at last in a corner. Then the leader came and stood over him. ;
“As you have informed us,’ he mur- mured, “that the police are soon to pay us a visit, we cannot remain to keep you com- pany, but in order-that you may not feel lonely, we are going to leave something to amuse you.’
As he spoke he produced a bomb, attached to which was a fuse. This he placed on the floor directly in front of the helpless man’s eye and, taking from the table the candle, touched it to the fuse.
“Tt will burn for ten minutes,” he ex- plained gently. “If your friends come within that time, you are saved. If not, well, you will be an example for the rest of the police of the advantages of obeying orders promptly.”
Without another word he turned and motioned his men from the room. In silence they went out, the leader following.
For a time the sheer terror of his position overwhelmed the unfortunate man. He could neither think nor realize his peril. Blind with fright, he lay waiting with closed eyes and clenched hands, the perspiration rolling from his body. = :
Suddenly he nerved himself and opened his eyes. The room was absolutely dark except for one tiny spark that crept nearer and nearer and nearer the deadly bomb. He saw that the fuse was half burned and that he had but five minutes to live.
Less than five minutes. Four minutes. Less. than that. Would they come? Oh, Heaven! would help come in time?
The seconds were flying by with astonish- ing speed. There were less than three minutes of the fuse left now, less than three minutes of life.
He watched the spark, his face green with terror, his eyes starting from his head. The fuse had almost gone. There was scarcely a minute and a half more of it to burn, and then death.
_ With an effort that was almost super- human, he closed his eyes, Like a flash, an
“You MUST NOT LET THEM SHOOT ME,” HE SCREAMED, FALLING ON HIS KNEES.
incredible number of memories swept over him. The picture of his home far away
upon the Volga suddenly rose before his
mind in its minutest detail.
His father was sitting in the door, smoking after his day's work. Another picture crowded it away. It was that ofa dancing-girl in a theater in Odessa. He
had seen her but once, he had not thought ;
of her for years.
He thought of his. Saene of his mother. ‘Hi soley ambitions long aso cast aside ;
THE StY. = es
was attached a burnt-out fuse.
“you musT not!”
and forgotten, and then he opened his eyes once more. The minute and a half had passed. It was but ten seconds more before
the fuse would reach the bomb.
Fifteen minutes later the police arrived. They found a dead man whose face was so_ distorted that it was impossible to recognize him, lying beside an empty bomb, to which
surgeon bent over him. std Dead, ue ae said. “ Dead from fear.”
The nelies =.
BY
IZOLA FORRESTER.
More Than Half a Million Dollars Worth of Diamonds, False Teeth, Wooden Legs, and Other Articles Go Astray on New York Trains and Ships Every Year.
A and Ma Knickerbocker are awfully absent-minded people. As they ram- ble back and forth on their little is- land, and trot over ferries, and out
of town by train or steamer, they lose about six hundrd thousand dollars worth of articles every year.
“Rive hundred a day,” said one traction official, spreading out 4 book where you could find anything from a ten-thousand-dol- lar pearl necklace to a crate of live chickens, all carefully tabulated and described. “ And that’s only on street-cars and elevated trains. We don’t touch the out-of-town traffic. Did you see that young lady who just went out?”
We had seen her. She was a very charm- ing young lady, all in spotless wash-silk, with an outing hat pinned jauntily on her curls. Real curls, too, they were.
“She’s from some Jersey resort. Lost a gold locket on the Subway coming up from
South Ferry. It was turned in all right last
night, Did you see her face when she de- scribed it?” he smiled slighfly. “It was en- - graved ‘Heart Throbs,’ she said, and was
absolutely of no value except to owner. Oh, yes, she owned the locket and got it.”
Ba tom
More than two thousand cars roll over the rails in Manhattan, in one day. About two million people ride back and forth on them. Their little absent-minded ways give em- ployment to hundreds of persons who do nothing for a living except keep tab on the “Lost and Founds.” ~*~ .
At the ferries, steamship lines, and railroad stations the hurrying travelers leave behind them thousands of dollars worth of property and. valuables. Yet it is estimated that over two-thirds finds its way back to the owners, either through advertising, or applying at the “Lost Articles’ window.
“The women lose just three times as much as the men,” said a man who had gathered some special “ points” on the romances and adventures of things that go astray. Here is his list for last year:
915 watches. 324 lockets. 186 earrings. 485 bracelets. 376 brooches. 312 diamond rings.
710 diamond pins. 175 diamond studs. 485 chains and fobs.873 pocketbooks. 64 necklaces. — 821 handbags.
“And those, mind, only represent jewelry and portable cash in pocketbooks,” he added, ~
——
~ parrots,
- ROMANCES OF THE LOST AND FOUND.
turning to another list. “Besides that we have a wagon-load of umbrellas, two bushels of eye-glasses, over a bushel of keys, thirty thousand gloves, one thousand One hundred men’s overcoats, and one thousand eight hundred women’s garments. “Those are ordinary, losable things, one might say, but can you tell me why on earth
~ people travel around and lose rat-traps, elec- tric signs, blackjacks, bust-forms, false teeth,
~-and glass eyes, also wooden legs and babies? Also dogs, cats, snakes, canaries, pet mice, rabbits, and guinea-pigs?
“One woman came in here and asked if we had found a framed picture of Lincoln and a clothes-wringer on an Ammex ferry- boat. We had. She claimed them. A man journeyed all the way in from Ocean Gtove after a lost bathing-suit and a box of com- plexion wafers.
“There’s a crate of live chickens that haven’t been claimed yet, and they live com- fortably down in the main office, and. lay eggs in as placid and homelike a way as in their own Jersey barnyard.” | - Up at the Grand Central Station they tell a story of a pretty girl passenger who, one Saturday afternoon recently, had to wait for her train. The station was crowded with the usual week-end throng, and she found a
a i su
zine, waiting for the man with the mega- — phone to call the train for White Plains.
Next to her sat a young man, rather list- less and bored. Suddenly the White Plains train was called. The pretty girl in red jumped up hurriedly and ran toward the concourse.
Then did the listless ence anes up, i6e =
there, right under his very eyes, Cinderella had dropped her slipper. It was a small, tan slipper, with a natty leather bow twisted under a steel buckle.
Without an instant’s thought he grabbed it up and ran after the girl in red. She had vanished in the crowd. He made for the White Plains local gateway. Yes, there was — a flying glimpse of red in the distance.
“All aboard!” yelled the man with the megaphone. The last one through the gate was a young man racing for the train, and — in his hand was the tan slipper. He had — barely time to swing up on the last plat-— form. been through for many a day. All through — the length GE that crowded train he paraded, hunting for a lost Cinderella all in red. And when at last he found her—_
That’s all. The official records go no fur- ther. The lost goods were returned, and no
UP.
seat facing the big clock, and: read her on ee
Then came the worst ordeal he had
4s
‘IT WAS A SMALL, TAN SLIPPER, with A NATTY LEATHER BOW TWISTED. UNDER A STEEL SS ; BUCKLE. WITHOUT AN INSTANTS THOUGHT HE GRABBED | iT : : RSE ae ee
= his big book.
“questions FO Possibly there was a re- ward, but it is not on the records.
“Here is a funny one,” said the keeper of the records, pointing to a four-line item in “Last September a middle-
aged lady from Larchmont got off a New _ Haven local here, walked out of the station, and as soon as she had crossed Forty-Sec- ond Street she missed a box she had car- ried. Next morning this ad. came out in
z the. papers, | ‘and had everybody hustling:
- Lost—Small, black tin box, on New York, New Haven and ‘Hartford Railroad train at 10 a.m., Sept. 16. $10,000 ‘reward for its return with contents. No questions. -B. F. N. 806, 214 Montague Street, ‘Brooklyn. 1 “There was three hundred thousand dol-
lars in money, jewelry, securities, and pa-
pers in that small tin box, yet it has never turned up, and the lady never gave any rea-
‘son as to why she was carrying around a
box containing a fortune under her‘arm.
A Fortune in a Cigar-Box. “Tt seems as if people think the worst
~ kind of receptacle they hide away valuables
in, the less likely they are to lose them. > One of our trainmen found an ordinary
-cigar-box lying on the platform’ at Port Chester. He took it in the baggage-room, ~ tossed it under the counter, and forgot all about it until a woman came rushing into the station about an Hour later, asking if anybody had found her cigar-box.
_“*T found a cigar-box,’ said the man, will Fenlon. ‘What was in it?’
«<«Twenty thousand dollars,’ gasped the woman. Fenlon took the box out from under the counter and opened it. It was packed with hundred-dollar yellow-backs. He handed it over, and got five dollars re- ward.
“Here's another one:
Gop Cross, set with diamonds, was lost either in station or on train going to Fort Worth, Tex. “The girl who lost that made an awful fuss. She was bound for Forth Worth, and the cross was very valuable, besides being a keepsake. Well, it was a rainy day, but that didn’t fit into the story till later. She missed the cross as she was buying her sleeper. "Next to her stood a man who helped her hunt for it. He carried an umbrella. That afternoon we got a wire saying the man had‘ found the cross in his umbrella when he had got off the train at Buffalo, and opened it. It was sent on to the girl, and the last I heard was that it was the sole ornament worn by the bride. I guess when a thing like that happens, if anybody’s got a bit of superstition. in their make- “up, they’ll follow the lead.” Besides sdverigng all lost articles found
THE LIVE WIRE. -
on the traction lines, a careful watch is kept =
of the lost column for possible owners.
One day a valuable purse, made of the skin
of a Gila monster mounted in gold, was handed in by a conductor. It was adver- tised the next day.’
Lost—Giit lady’s bag fullof tender association. Con- ==
tents of value only toowner. Liberal reward.
“We knew this one was the ‘gilt lady’s’” bag all - right,” “There wasn’t anything in it but love-let- ters, so when we saw the tender-association ad. we thought sure it was a case of breach of promise. But when she came down and asked for it, there wasn’t a laugh in the place. Shé was in mourning, and the letters were the last ones he had written to her. Women are queer. You ought to have seen her grab that bag.
“Rewards? Oh, they don’t amount to much. One conductor came in here with a Tiffany pearl necklace valued at $2,500. He got two dollars reward. A few days later, another conductor on the same line picked up a wad of two thousand in bills, and the man who lost it peeled off an outside hun- dred-dollar strip, and handed it over with thanks. Men will pay a bigger reward than a woman any day, yet the women make the gteatest noise when they lose anything.”
One day a whole line of Jersey com- muters on the Erie road were treated to a quick bit of excitement. A porter hurried by carrying a couple of suit-cases. They belonged to different people, and he had scarcely delivered them, and started back along the platform, when a man called out of a window to-him:
“This isn’t my suit-case.”
There were four minutes to spare. The porter hustled after the lady who had accepted the other suit-case. announced that it was her suit-case, and there was no mistake.
Right Lady; Wrong Suit-Case.
While the porter and the other owner danced helplessly, the conductor appeared and requested the lady to open her suwit- case for inspection. She indignantly re- fused. Thereupon the man opened the other suit-case gladly, and exposed to the interested gaze of a crowd a bright cherry- colored kimono, a powder-box, a jar of cold cream, two new novels, various articles of lingerie, and a hot-water bottle.
“These things don’t belong to me,” said —
the man positively, but there was no need for further argument. shriek, the lady caught her belongings and shut them from the view of the curious.
And the man took his lost bag, tipped the
foe and the train moved on.
said one of the clerks. -
She tranguilly -
With a smothered —
"Late one Sunday afternoon recently a
“policeman in Central Park picked up a start- lingly natural switch of rich Titian red locks, with @ three-tier row of puffs at- tached. He handed it in at the station, and ~ had his own little set of troubles to over- = come that night when his wife found a stray auburn hair on his coat of cadet blue. -But that’s not the story. Early the next morning a messenger-boy arrived at the - $tation with a daintily scented note request-
SY!
. j Z KA) = i 5
FENLON TOOK THE BOX OUT FROM UNDER THE COUNTER AND OPENED IT.
€ ROMANCES OF THE LOST AND FOUND. —
of the lovely eyes he adored, have it miracu- +3
lously restored to brilliancy in some wierd Oriental style, and wear it on his heart. —
Yet the ad. appeared here in prosaic New
York. It needed a COMPIEISEREAEY: one;
Lost—A lady with only one blue eye.
receive reward.
When the finder appeared at the “Tost and Found” window of the newspaper in
=~
iw (ZZ
IT WAS PACKED
WITH HUNDRED-DOLLAR YELLOW-BACKS,
ing the return of the locks. He was asked to give the owner’s name. “Aw, what do youse take me for?” he demanded. “No loidy wants her name = mixed up in a deal like dis. Gimme de ; - burning bush‘an’ lemme go.” —- So, gallantly and discreetly, as they do these things in the Park, the police re- “turned the sunset-tinted switch to its un- : SSeaownt owner, via the mum A. D.-T. Plenty of glass eyes are lost and found, espedially on steamboats; but one adver- --tisement that called for the return of a ~“Jady’s blue eye set in diamonds” smacked of the barbarous. — So might an Eastern Sultan honor a ee favorite—take one |
which the ad. appeared, he produced the eye. And it was an eye, too, a beautifully hand-painted, languorous blue eye set in diamonds for a cuff-button.
The man who claimed it showed its mate, but when he was asked for his reason for wearing them he merely smiled. As if such
things needed a reason, or could be reduced
to a reasonable basis. Surely, the world grows old in romance when it fails to scent the trail of adventure and love about E such happenings. g
A private detective told of one case in which he was personally engaged in New
York City. A man about thirty-five came Sy
to his office one aay and told a Bp Saees: ele a
Finder will please return to owner of missing blue TseS =a
=
: of coincidence.
-He had been abroad for
several years, after the breaking of his
-theater-entrance:
engazement by the girl he was to marry.
On board the liner he happened to run across a home paper, and, casually glancing ait over, came upon. this advertisement in
the “Lost and Found” column:
z “Lost—Diamond solitaire ring. Engraved M, W. to a SK. 0
., Dec, 15—'05. Valued as keepsake. Lib- eral reward. No questions asked.
“That is the identical ring that I gave the young woman I was to have married,” he told me, giving me the full names, which I cannot repeat. “I want to find the ring and return it to her.”
A Loss That Reunited Old Lovers.
“Tt took me nearly a week to get a line on that ring,” said the detective musingly. “Tt was a valuable one and, being marked, was hard to dispose of, but finally I found it in a pawn-shop ’way up ih the Bronx. You ought to have seen the fellow’s face when I turned it over to him. He paid me hand-
- somely, and jumped into a cab to hustle off -up-town and claim the liberal reward. I
guess that girl got a surprise. They were
-married within a month.”
Early one Sunday morning a_ waiter,
-. standing out in front of Engel's restaurant
on Thirty-Fifth Street, saw a man lying on his stomach over an iron grating near the Garrick Theater. He had a couple of sticks about five feet long, and soap was pasted on the ends of them.
“What is it?” asked the waiter.
The man raised his head and beckoned. ,
“Help me get it out, and I'll divvy with you,” he said.
Tt sounded fair enough. The waiter helped fish about in the dark space beneath the grating, and they finally pulled up some- thing. It was a lady’s brooch, three large stones set in the form of a three-leaf clover.
“Diamonds, ain’t they?” asked the hun- gry-looking man who had found them first.
“Nix. Paste. Diamonds is white. These is yellow. Give you a quarter for them.”
But the man hesitated. He was not a tramp. He was out of work and_ had tramped up from his lodgings on the Bow- ery to look for a job. The quarter would buy him a breakfast.
Then his eyes noticed the sign above the “You Never Can Tell.”
It was a pregnant message of hope. He refused the quarter and started back down- town with his find in his pocket. The next
; day he found an ad. in the papers: =
= $1,000 REWARD for the return of three-stone dia-
mond brooch. Diamonds were tie Maren at, ent, set in form of clover-leaf.
probably between Garrick Theater eet: “Rector’s
restaurant, wm. A. Sleveseek: 16 Maiden Lane.
THE LIVE WIRE.
So Patrick J. Quigley, free-lance of for-— tune, went down
up for one thousand dollars. never can tell when fate and fortune lurk in the words of a four-line ad. in the “Lost and Founds” of the great metropolitan” newspapers. z
And it isn’t safe to trust to first appear-—
ances. Coming in on a Coney Island ferry- boat one Saturday night, a straw hat blew off the head of a happy-looking, middle- aged New Yorker. Instantly he became a
maniac. Rollickingly, the wayward head- piece dariced ahead of him the full length of the deck, while its owner rushed, madly after it.
“Five dollars to anybody who stops it!” he yelled. “Ten dollars! lars!”
It was an ordinary looking two-dollar straw hat, yet everybody within hearing dis- tance got busy. Just as a fitful gust of wind lifted it toward the railing a woman caught it deftly on the end of her parasol and saved it from a dip into Gravesend Bay.
“Madam, I thank you with all my heart,” gasped the owner gratefully, and, carefully drawing down the leather hat-band, he re- moved a lot of folded bills. “That hat was worth about four hundred dollars to me that minute,” he added, and without any hesitation peeled off the twenty dollars reward.
Money Is Surely Hard to Keep.
“Whew!” he added later to a man be- side him, when he sank into a seat. “I’ve spent every dollar for six Saturdays running before I got home. Tucked the bunch in that hat-band to be sure I’d forget I hid it there, and get home all right this time. pay to take chances, does it?” incident shows it.
And that’s the kind of a tussle that New York has to find things it loses. Consider- ing that there are more than four millions of people in the town, most of whom are intent upon getting hold of anything that looks good, it may seem strange that anything that —
This little
is lost is ever recovered by its owner. Many — persons who believe they are strictly honest —
will insist upon the payment of a reward be- _ fore they will give up something of value that they have picked up in the street. To such persons it never seems to occur that — there is something inconsistent in an honest man or woman demanding pay for doing a thing that the law would put them in jail for not doing. Maybe they don’t see it that way, but that’s the way it ‘is, whether they
“see it or not.
to Maiden- Lane and traded the yellow diamonds he had picked -You certainly
Twenty dol- —
It doesn’t *
<
WE CERTAINLY RESP: To
Dares
NTIL we grew so up to date The furniture within our fiat Was made upholstered—this or that—
Built for your comfort “while you wait’; But now our parlor has gone daft, My wife says that ’tis “Arts and Craft.”
iM THE ONLY CHEERFUL THIN & (N THIS SHAcK!
YOU CALL THIS A
HOME ?
WE MAI E_ FURNITURE
So THIS 1S ComFort En? =a i it Nl The mantel was a useful place Whereon a clock would chime the hour, A vase would hold the latest flower, And frames stood round each pictured face. Now one dim candle sheds its light— (Illumine my artistic sight!) My spouse sits on a settle straight See And | gaze at her from a chair Called Greek? or Dutch? (that’s here nor there) ’Tis never moved except as freight— Our cozy corner’s goné as well For Arts and Craft don’t deem them swell. * ~~ : 7 One lacquered jar upon the floor st
Holds a weird plant no Nature grew; It’s stunted by a “craft” or two
Like all within our real-art door.
High latticed windows tell of day,
We can’t see out—it’s not “ au fait”!
e ;
AN “ART-FULL tAW- = 1 = A o17 :
GEE! WHAT (THAT DAR LMUSTY SMELL?
JUST ART DEAR, SUST ART!
/GOSH'THIS 1S A CHEESY OLD Barn!!
Thus crafty Art lays our home bare, And artful Craft has had its fling,
A lantern on a chain’s “ the thing” So gas-light jets no longer flare:
A musty odor makes me fret As incense mocks my cigarette.
But my brave wife is martyred, too, For her piano is no more—
A harp stands where it was before, She cannot play, but faith is true,
Full many suns rose since we laughed Save with a “stencilled smile” of craft!
I wish that | might turn to stone
Ze Like Victory or fair Hermes, My wife might then turn Japanese, Effective to her very bone.
_ 1 cannot live my natural part
in rooms depressed by Crafts and Art.
HAT harm can a pint of water do? That is what a Vienna athlete thought when an American bet
him that he could not endure having it drop, drop by drop, upon his hand from a height of only three feet.
All the spectators thought the American ~ had taken leave of his senses, for the athlete’s hand looked as if nothing less than a sledge-hammer could injure it in the. slightest. They soon learned their mistake.
When three hundred drops had fallen upon the man’s hand, it was noticed that
18
oot bs
THIS, IF YOU THINK IT’S EASY.
"
his face. was very red and that he was obviously suffering great pain. At the four
hundred and twentieth drop he quit. The
palm of his hand was swollen and inflamed,
in one spot the skin had been broken, and
the pain was so great that the athlete de-
clared he could endure it no longer.
_ side.
T was pretty weather in northern Ala- bama. The Tennessee River was in tide, owing to long rains in- central
Tennessee, and the water was pouring over the banks into the swamps along the south But the sun was warm, the ducks were shooting northward, and coons and possums were basking on the tops of hollow ~sycamore-limbs.
~Coming down, the river were people “ go-
ing West.” Some were in shanty-boats, some in skiffs, and a few were on log rafts on which had been built little lean-to camps. ‘They were farmers out of Clinch, French Broad, Little Tennessee, Hiwasse, and other streams, bound for Texas by way of the
Ohio, Mississippi, and Atchafalaya.
They had heard from friends who went before that- down in Texas one could get two-bale cotton land for the price of hog- wallows on the flanks of the Cumberlands. So they had sold out their holdings, built little craft of some sort, and were most of them destined to become happy shanty-boat- ers on the lower Mississippi. .
Among the rest were Gene Dundon and his wife. This was their honeymoon as well as their home-seeking. They had slipped away from Tazewell County after a secret marriage before a kindly old parson, Hatha- way Blake. Old Hathaway loved the young people. He liked to see the stalwart young mountaineer “steal his‘girl,” in spite of op- position, and “run her” to some new home.
He knew Gene Dundon and Hattie Brown, Why shouldn’t he? MHattie was a pretty girl who sang at revivals, and Gene could shoot the head off a squirrel at sixty yards,
What Hathaway did not know was the ex- istence of Lottie Kemple, up Neuman’s Ridge way, where Dundon had been a fre- quent visitor. $
She had sent word down to Dundon that he must come to see her, and the next night but one Dundon “ started West” with Hat- tie Brown. Dundon did not quite under- stand Lottie. He thought she would for- get. Even if she did not, she would not know what had become of him until he was well on his way to Texas,
It was a weck after he had started whith Lottie Kemple rode down to Clinch and heard the truth from the parson’s own lips. She wept for an hour, while the white- haired old man patted her head, tried to comfort her, and assured her that he would be her best friend. She dried her eyes at last, smiled faintly, and, after a bite to eat, asked the parson’s wife for a “snack” to last her on her way. Finally she rode away on her pony into the coming night.
“T shore must be goin’!” she cried. “I shore must. Hit’s a long road, an’ time’s sho’t—yassuh!”
She galloped up the trail till she was out — of sight of the parson’s house. Then she treined her pony into the woods, up the ridge back to the hill-path. Turning her face séuthward, she started down the river.
All night she rode, but not at a gallop, because it was a long race, and she must — save her horse. She knew the way—she . had read the stars many a night by Dun- don’s side, from some point of rock above the valleys. She laughed mirthlessly as she rode. She had been happy once.
19
It was a wild country, and the bridle-path Jay through a mountain forest. She could ook down nearly a thousand feet upon narrow, level bottoms, where she detected “an occasional reddish glow, the reflection of fire or smoke above a stick-and-mud chim- ney. Once, stopping to rest her horse, she heard a rabbit running away in the brush.
- Dawn found her with tired eyes staring at the path ahead. A few miles farther on, and she turned down from the ridge road and arrived at Campbell’s store-house.
~Campbell’s wife was a first cousin.
“Tm travelin’,” Lottie laughed gleefully. “T’m on the long road. Sho. I be’n goin’ all night—yassuh!”
“Sho!” Mrs. Campbell exclaimed. ‘man stole yo’, Lottie?” -~“Nossuh! I’m goin’ to steal a man— hue!” Lottie answered.
Mrs. Campbell laughed at that, and Lot-
“Some
tie remained with her over the next night.
ville at noon,
Then she rode on down the valley where there was a second cousin, beyond whose home she had neither friends nor relatives.
Three days later she rode through Knox- ‘sunbonneted, rosy-cheeked, with her rifle across her lap. She had heard
of Dundon on the riverside just above the
Holston-French Broad fork. He had gone by the “week before in a little red shanty- boat, and the girl with him had been all smiles. Dundon was good to her.
~ Lottie was in a strange country now, and
_ the people she met along the road stared at
her. She did not smile now; her Kemple lips were set and a little drooping.
When night came she stopped at some riverside farmhouse. She was going, she told the people, to see relatives, to visit her brother, to find her sister—any excuse served her. Her only concern was to re- member in the morning the story: she had
‘told the night before.
Once she let slip the truth. It was at the Stone Shoals. She had-forded them, and on the far side she found a white man mending hoop-nets. He was talkative, and
when she asked if shanty-boaters went down the river, he answered: “Right smart, yassuh. Ho law! They
was a mountain man drapped down three days ago. Hit war right windy, and that man got blowed out the channel—hit’s on’y two foot deep, anyhow. An’ hisn’s bo’t got stuck onto the Buffalo bar, right yonder,
yassuh. An’ say, he was jes’ the tomfool-
ingest man! He an’ his woman was all seairt up.” ~ I
“A little red shanty-boat—a woman with black hair?”
is Yassuh! _ He had a scar onto his cheek.” -—
THE LIVE WIRE.
“On’y three days!” Lottie cried. “I'll get that man! Yassuh!” 2 “Sho!” the fisherman exclaimed. “ You
goin’ to kill that man?” But Lottie leaped into the saddle again — and galloped away, while the old fisherman _ rose stiffly to his feet and stared after her, his net-needle in his hand. : At Loudon, Gene Dundon and his wife heard bad news. Gene had left his address
_ with his brother, Jim, and now, at the end
of two wecks, Jim had sent a letter in or-
der that Gene might know whether Hattie
Brown's folks were ——— him or not. The letter read:
Dear Gene—The folks is all well and paw kill anuther hawg las nite an we got the uper lot plowd las eving and i saw delp Brown after yo got away an he was mad but sad he wud kil yo when yo got back so i think he ant
- mad enuf to get yo by that time but lottie kempel is gon an her poney an: she past Grale ford two das later an has her skurel gun an nobuddy nos is she alive or ded or war she is wel i reckin thar ain much to tel for it is lat candel lite an we air goin to plow the corn tomorer an maw plant the garding good by jim.
When Gene read that Lottie -had left home, he remembered many things about Lottie Kemple which he had forgotten un- der the spell of Hattie Brown’s pretty eyes and gentle voice. Lottie had said once that the man who tried to “get shet” of her would surely “dread it,’ and now he had done that. He wondered what he had to dread? After the letter’s arrival, he began to hurry down the river. He started early in the morning, and floated till almost dark, but as he floated it seemed as though he was the chosen companion of misfortune. He had lost hours of good floating by go- ing aground on Stone Shoals. Day after day he had been held back by dry gales out of the south. Storms held him, and when the drift was running his wife tor- mented his heart with the fear that some of the flotsam would crtish the thin sides of his shanty-boat.
While Dundon lost tire, Tote: Seauet She sold her pony at Walnut and bought a canoe—a long, light plank canoe—and she
drove it down stream, hugging the banks —
when the winds blew and seeking the swift- _ est current when the day was calm. Her journeys down the Holston on rafts and in small boats, visiting her relatives, had pre- pared her for the long race.
~ She Fass on sSbaiite Pests and at Vul-
old farmer’s family.
‘screaming in flocks,
ON THE LONG ROAD. = 21
ture Island she heard that she was 6nly a
day behind the little red shanty-boat. But now she had a chance to travel with an It was threatening weather—the spring crop rains seemed to be at hand—and for a week she floated no mofe than a few miles a day, hoping for clear weather.
The next time she heard of the little red
shanty-boat it was three days ahead. Then, one murky morning, she abandoned her friends, took to her canoe again, and started on. As she paddled, the clouds broke away,
-the sun came out, and the girl knew that
she had done well to follow in the canoe.
The river was full to the bank. Orioles were singing in the elms, and bluejays were At night the mocking- birds were dreaming in the willows.
Lottie paddled all day long, and when The.
night came she did not go ashore. river, she knew, was safe for the hundred miles fo Mussel Shoals. Tired out at last, the vengeance- -seeker curled down on the
straw in the bottom of the canoe and went
to sleep. The sun wakened her,
=~
It was a glorious spring day. Birds sang, the scent of countless blossoms filled the air, the pale green of new-born leaves col- ored the landscape, and the river itself was the color of liquid gold. In her heart the girl felt that the chase was nearing an end.
She was weary and sad, and the thought
pleased her, She scanned the shores carefully, watch-
JUST BEFORE SUNDOWN SHE SPIED A SHANTY- BOAT MAKING TOWARD THE SOUTH BANK IN-THE BEND BELOW HER. SHE RAN HER CANOE INTO THE SHADOW OF THE TREES AND FLOATED SLOWLY TOWARD THE CRAFT,
ing the inlets lest the little red shanty-boat be tied up in one. At Decatur, she studied the shanty-boat town till she had seen every boat in it. A few miles below, she saw the big floating sawmill, and .one of the deck hands warned her that the shoals were not far below.
Just before sundown, she spied a shanty- boat making toward the south bank in the bend below her. She ran her -canoe into the shadow of the trees and floated slowly toward the craft. The man at the sweeps was Gene Dundon, and the woman by his side wag the yho had been Hattie
EC ranch, Lottie Kemple F to fall. She dropped "1 ndred yards of the Hee
She ale hear the sound of voices; Pe
heard Hattie begin to sing. The sound cut’ >
the deserted girl to the heart. The shadow on the window-curtain was that of Gene;
ca
j
i
eat supper. > “gat down at the same side of the table with him. The sight of the silhouette wounded
she saw that he was at the table, about to After a time, Hattie came and
the other woman Ae but she held her breath.
~ The minutes drageed along. After a time the light was blown out and Lottie
watched the stars to make sure that she did
not think an age had passed when only minutes had gone by. Slowly, the roar of the great Muscle Shoals became more and more audible as the night grew older. It was only a little way to the canal wing dam, and below that was the water—tumbling over ledges of rocks, splitting on the points of islands, jumping up and down in the wild abandon of a mile wide river, torn by
oz jagged stone and whipped into foam by
sawyer snags.
At last, whem a pale star had passed through the breadth of a tree, Lottie let go
- sher hold and floated down the slack water
_ long ropes, one from each gunwale.
= straightening out the lines. _ the lines from their stakes, and when next
to the little cabin-boat. She was in the shadow, and all was quiet within. The sucking of the water along the bank helped to conceal her movements.
The boat was tied to the bank by two They hung slack most of the time, but occasionally the current tugged at the silent craft, Lottie slipped
the current tugged, the shanty-boat came
_ tically adopted by t
away.
Lottie watched the craft clear the brush and saw it drawn steadily into the main current. Then she drove her canoe into the wake and sitting, with her chin on her fists, and her elbows on her knees, she floated with the shanty-boat, a few yards behind, toward the leaping waters.
Ahead of her, a mile away, was the light marking the entrance to the canal. Below
THE- LIVE -WIRE: :
y that, a gray haze hung above the gloomy river, and out of the haze came the roar, heavinge and rolling as the water ‘pounded - upon the rocks.
The boat. floated along steadily and quietly. There were no waves on the water, no wind in the air. The huge, dark masses of the bank seemed to be marching past the _ stars above the tree-tops. On-the water, a few gleams of light flickered and darted. The light at the entrance to the canal grew plainer as it became nearer.’
The canoe and the shanty-boat floated on down, turning from side to side as the eddies in the current caught them. The shanty-boat came between the canoe and the light, and the girl saw a little halo of light along the roof of the boat, showing that there was a faint shadow cast by the light, it was so near.
Ahead, the gray mist became whiter, and to right and left, two banks 6f trees on islands marked the way to the wing dam. Down the center of the way led the shanty- boat. Now the roar became furious and tumultuous. The light had been passed. The girl in the canoe made no motion and uttered no sound.
Suddenly, a light flashed-in the shanty- boat—it flickered a moment, and then burned steadily. The front door opened and a beam of light—yellow lamp light—shot out into the night. It struck against the gray fog-bank above the leaping water. Then the shadow of a human form was thrown against the gray mist, with the arms raised in astonishment.
The next instant, a far-heard scream—a man’s screatn—cut through the roar of the waters. Then the shanty-boat pitched over, down and out of sight. A moment later, the canoe dipped at the fall and the girl, her — eyes shut now, but her position unchanged, followed her faithless sweetheart.
A LAND WITHOUT ORPHANS.
‘HERE are no orphans That is not because pare there but because, when st at once steps in to the ones. Children whc ‘death of their natu
‘in Australia. its never die do, the “state ‘their little bbed by
Unless some near re! sire to assume the respon _ demonstrate his ability to d is of the country. These foster-homes are examined closely, and often two or three
Ss
: committed to the Children’s Council, “which selects some home among the farmers
are tried before one is found in which the ~
child finds congenial surroundings. After thirteen, the state feels that its
card should earn more than board and
“lodging. - At that age, therefore, he is hired re prac- out, usually, however, to the foster-parents
who have been previously taking care of
e- him. Three-fourths of his wages are de-
posited in savings banks; the remainder is his. When he becomes of age, or if he
“wishes money in order to learn a trade or
to attend a more advanced school—or in the
-case of a girl, when she wishes to marry—
the savings are turned over to the ward.
2
LOST? NOT “FAT HEAD’S” MONEY!
mae
=~ <5 Se Vet
BS
me
if
a
Tore
_—Stamn\slod -
SAIREY ANN: “NOW YOU'VE BIN AN’ LORST YER PENNY, FAT ’EAD.” — JOHN JAMES; “NO, I AIN'T LOST IT, SILLY, ’COS I KNOWS WHERE IT IS.” tee
>; =) re 7 : —London Sketeh. re 23 : : : ee
BY HAROLD BOLCE.
ors,
Sometimes It Paints Pictures on Human Flesh; On Other Occasions It a Will Melt Watch-Chains Without Burning the Cloth That the Chains Touch.
IGHTNING is whimsical both when its flashing means death and when it comes with elfin grace to perform wonderful and fascinating pranks.
Men of science, investigating the strange and sinister phenomena of lightning, confess that the secret of its wayward and_ fantastic power is thus far undivined. In the United States from seven hundred to eight hundred people are annually killed by lightning. in™ addition nearly a thousand suffer serious in- - jury. Increasing hundreds are singled out for this element’s incredible caprice, but are not harmed. ‘The total value of property de- stroyed by lightning exceeds three million dollars in a year. Mi Altogether, in every twelve months, light- ning strikes America more than six thousand times! — ~ A current of ten thousand volts is capable of jumping across a space of half an inch of common air. A lightning-flash extending from the clouds to the earth has an electro- motive power of many millions of volts.
7
a r
24
If hovering along the cloud-line above the American continent, there lurked an aerial army we could not see, and could locate only when its fearful artillery flashed, and if this unseen and formidable enemy hurled shells of vast explosive power six thousand times a year at our people, fear and horror would stir the nation.
And it would challenge the genius of the republic to destroy or conquer the enemy, especially when we found that the force ambushed in the clouds was utilizing laws unknown to us.
. There are in this fulgurant fire and fury undreamed of possibilities. A young man in Europe was recently killed by lightning while returning home from work. His clothing was neither deranged nor burned, but the nails were all drawn from his shoes, and the links of a silver chain he wore fused into an ingot, as if they had passed through a labora- tory fire. An assayer to accomplish what the lightning did in a flash would have been compelled to develop a heat of nearly a thou-
v
:
sand degrees. And the marvel grows as we dwell upon the miracle that the garments of the victim were not singed.
Tt frequently happens that lightning burns the body without setting fire to the clothing worn or even scorching it. Thomas Neale
_ reports a case where the hands were burned to the bone, while leaving intact the gloves the victim wore. On June Io, 1895,a woman was killed under a tree at Bellenghise, in Europe. Her body was burned to a crisp, but her clothing was not injured by the mysterious fire.
On the other hand, lightning often destroys the clothing, and even leaves the victim nude but free of any injury. Sometimes the light- ning takes one or several garments and leaves the rest.
Near Columbus, Georgia, last year, lightning leaped. from a tree to a house, shattered the weather-boards and ceiling, ripped off one side of an iron bed, and then glanced to Miss Hilda Clark, seated in the room. It tore off one of
- her garters, burned her stocking and unlaced a shoe, re- moving it. The young woman was terribly frightened, but not hurt.
It seems to be a favorite feat of lightning to un- . dress its victims.
A farmer named Fromentin was plowing a field in France, in 1903. Of his two horses, lightning killed one, spared the other, burned the farmer’s hat, and stripped him entirely of his clothing, but did not injure him. Theré are thousands of such instances. Sometimes
the people struck are killed, but just as fre- quently suffer no inconvenience, further than great fright and the loss of the clothing they wear.
The ancients believed that lightning was vengeful. The seeming anarchy of its pranks led the people of old to believe that lightning had a mind, and acted sportively or with sinister intent. little more than the ancients did regarding lightning, but they realize that its amazing power and handiwork indicate unknown laws of energy. = :
ON FRANK’S BREAST WAS
NESS OF A TREE.
The scientists now know —
THE PRANKS OF LIGHTNING. — 25
In spite of its tremendous power, Tene ning frequently snatches implements out of people’s hands without inflicting injury. Sometimes in the fwinkle of an eye, it
transports victims fifty yards or more and
sets them down unharmed. In a flash, with incredible dexterity, it has shaved men. Upon the skin of otherssit imprints strange photo- graphs.
At least on one occasion lightning extract- ed silver from the coin in one compartment
of a purse and spread a delicate tracery of
this metal‘on the gold in another.
As a matter of fact, scientists’ conipilatons: <a of lightning pranks read like the records of ~
goblin deeds. It is, perhaps, the world’s most fascinating chapter in nature’s mysteries, and, as stated, it suggests
the possibility of eclipsing even the far wrought by advance.
science simply the multiplying in- stances of light- ning’s fantasy. Explanations are not even offered.
The fate that strikes down one inmate of a room
men in a ~ field, destroys one and leaves the other, is one of the con- stantly recurring mysteries of lightning. On June 15, of last year, word came that Miss Grace Syres, of Rawley, Iowa, was killed by lightning while she was in her home, and that the stroke that had crashed through the roof darted, after claiming one victim, be- tween two infant twins, cutting the mat- tress completely in two, but leaving the babes unharmed.
Last year Lige Huttnats a farmer, living in the neighborhood of Shelbyville, Ken- tucky, was walking home with an ax on his shoulder. Lightning struck him, and he was found walking about, dazed, in a circle, the crown of his hat gone, and its rim around his neck. Blood was issuing from his mouth and nose. upon reaching the farmer, found that the
FOUND A PERFECT LIKE-
man was not seriously injured, but that all-
~
achievements total marvels thus
' men in electrical- At -present>
stands amazed at
and spares the other, or, of two.
A physician was summoned and, |
ae i Me
=m
the hair on his head and face had been re- moved as if he had been shaved.
In another instance lightning struck a farmer carrying a pitchfork on his shoulder.
- Force from the clouds seized the implement,
carried it fifty yards away and twisted its prongs into corkscrews. The farmer was unhurt. oe >
At Delphi, Ohio, on June 8, 10907, while nine persons were in the kitchen in the home of Louis Crawford, lightning struck a neigh- boring maple-tree and, traveling on a clothes-
line, plowed a great hole in the house,
THE STROKE CRASHED BETWEEN TWO INFANT TWINS, CUTTING 2 THE MATTRESS COMPLETELY IN TWO, BUT LEAV- ING THE BABES UNHARMED.
picked up a shotgun hanging on the wall,
_ snapped the weapon in two, dropped it harm-
lessly at the feet of the terrified spectators, and hurled the barrel across the room above their heads, burying it deep in the opposite wall. No one was injured.
Last year reports came from Nashville, Illinois, that the people of that town were miraculously saved by lightning from an impending cyclone. A funnel-shaped cyclone cloud was approaching the community, when out of the heavens the lightning flashed and
' split the dangerous spiral. It separated in-
fialves, encircled the town, and passed on, the divided sections reuniting just beyond the suburbs. - a
Early in the morning of June 7, 1907, the
family of A. J. Jones, of Clayton, Missouri, were awakened by blinding strokes of light- ning. The fash entered the house on a tele-
rs
Bie ss THE LIVE WIRE. : .
‘4
if phone wire, The mysterious visitor pulled up all the tacks in the carpet, and burned out all the lights. Terror-stricken, the members of the family coweréd in the dark until morn- ing, when it was found that no damage of any importance had been done.
Near Macon, Georgia, on December 23, 1907, while twenty neighbors were enjoying a festal evening at the Bryan home, at Reid’s Station, lightning descended and killed Fedora Bryan, a little child, who was sitting in the lap of Mrs. Donaldson, her aunt.
The lightning-bolt stripped the clothing from the child, but examination of the little corpse revealed no evidence of injury save a small burn on the left ankle. Fifteen other persons in the company were injured, but Mrs. Donaldson, who held the child, escaped unharmed,
Tt has been thought, even by scientific men, that some mathematical law may be discov- ered that will explain a part of the fantastic
operations of lightning.
Mme. la Comtesse Mycielska, of the Duchy of Posen, reported to French scientists, who inves- tigated the case, that lightning, in the summer of 1001, entered
. her stable, where there were twenty cows, and killed the first
_nearest the door, spared the sec-
ond, killed the third, and so on throughout the stalls, striking down all the uneven numbers, and not scorching a hair of the rest. A further cifrious fact in regard to this event was that although the building was stored with straw, nothing was set afire.
Many of the cases reported in America have similarly shown the lightning’s systematic selec- -
tion of victims by number, and also its strange actions in toying with powder and other things inflammable, without setting them afire.
Lightning is clearly a law unto itself.
Lightning struck the Maromme Powder Magazine, near Rouen, split the roof, and scattered two barrels of powder in the midst of eight hundred others, arid no explosion took place.
“Nevertheless, a powder magazine is not a safe place during a lightning-storm. At va- rious times thousands of people have been killed in the neighborhood of powder works destroyed by lightning flashes.
The fact, however, that lightning has toyed with powder without exploding it, is an expression of the rare delicacy of touch which characterizes this quick and flashing
visitant.
Sipe ee THE PRANKS
A FLASH ENVELOPED HIM FOR A MOMENT, AND WHEN IT HAD PASSED HE FOUND THAT THE LIGHTNING HAD LIT THE WICK.
In 1881 a botanist discovered that during a thunder-storm lightning had extracted the pollen from a clump of lilies and scattered it on surrounding flowers.
A chain worn around the neck of a young lady at a boarding-school at Bordeaux was cut into five pieces by a lightning-flash, and some of the fragments were fused and car- ried away. But the young woman was not hurt.
In 1899 a farmer held in his hand a candle which he had just put out. A flash envel- oped him for a moment, and when it had passed he found that the lightning had lit the wick. He was not physically injured, but was so startled by the occurrence that his reason fled.
The ability of lightning to kindle a flame at the tip of a candle is a strange contrast with the sometimes safe incursion of this fiery element into a powder-magazine. And the fact that the man that held the candle “was not struck reveals again the narrow
trail lightning may follow through the air.
Mention has been made of the curious
lightning pranks in pulling tacks from the carpet in a home at Clayton, Missouri. At Marseilles the lightning drew all the nails from a couch covered with satin, and these were found two years afterward under a tile. Nails, which ordinarily cannot be drawn from cabinets without injuring the wood, are
often extracted by lightning, with mysterious, =
skill. = The epee of lightning to aoe handi-
OF LIGHTNING.
Seneca reports a case in which ighesings=
melted a sword, and left the scabbard whole! In July, 1896, lightning entered a cottage,
struck the key from the lock and threw it in”
a shoe under a chest of drawers. A couple
of canes, resting beside the fireplace, were
lifted and laid on the mantel. And that was the only the house. In August, 1866, lightning struck a cupboard, breaking all the china dishes and sparing the earthenware.
Lightning is the one element Ge: ex- pressions are bewildering and contradictory.
Sometimes the bodies of victims killed be-_ come rigid, and turn almost to rock. Others
are so burned that they crumble at the
touch. Others, again, are totally consumed. —
This frequently happens in the case of animals.
On August 31, 1895, onic secodet- upon a field in which there was a man and
a flock of sheep. Twenty-five of the animals — were killed, and lay on the ground. The man —
was not injured, but the dog at his side was not only struck but annihilated. Not the slightest vestige of the animal remained.
The sheep-herder, at the time, was holding
a knife in his hand. This, too, was spirited away in the most mysterious manner.
evidence that lightning had struck —
LIGHTNING STRUCK HIM, AND HE WAS FOUND ee WALKING ABOUT, DAZED, IN A CIRCLE, THE CROWN OF HIS HAT GONE, AND ITS RIM AROUND HIS NECK,
v
28
- Tt is clear that men intent on crime could make effective and tetrible use of the lightning’s force if science knew how to ‘use it. And it may be providential that Nature is withholding the secrets of the lightning’s power.
- The lightning’s strength and skill in trans- porting people and objects struck give evi- dence of another mystery. It is not difficult to under- stand the scattering of objects by an ex- plosion or the hurling ~ force of thunder- bolts, but, in case of _ lightning, people are - frequently carried fifty yards or more and set down without
iff iu
&
THE LIVE WIRE. sae
hanged. He had been escorted to the scaf-. fold, the noose placed about his neck, the black cap adjusted, and the sheriff had raised his hand to give the signal to spring the trap. Instantly there was a lightning- flash, and the murderer fell dead. No one else was injured, but the sheriff was so affected by the tragic event that he deter- mined-never again to officiate at a hanging, and so resigned his office.
No one has fath- omed the lightning’s just or wanton an- archy.. There are various theories re- garding means of se- curing immunity from lightning, but these conceptions are
injury.
In April, 1866, dif i; vf) Ny ¢ proved to be as fan- lightning struck a hf HOM Wir he tastic as the light- house, and from a oe HE oe pled upper story carriec MJ _\\ ees n America more three children and persons are killed in put them on the the open by lightning ground, outside of than in houses. And the house, without _ yet of nine hundred injuring them. Yet and seventy - three the bed on which persons injured but
they slept was de- molished. The mother, in another room with a child _ at her breast, rose
in alarm. The light- ning lifted the infant ~ across the room, but did not hurt the child. The mother, in her terror, struck a match and was about to light a candle, when the lightning - flash struck her dead. All this in a few seconds.
Lightning is not usually so merciful in its treatment of little ones. A stimmer thunder-storm broke over a field in which a farmer and his family were haying. One of the childfen dropped on her knees and raised her hands in prayer. The up-pointed fingers attracted the lightning and she was killed. The rest of the members in the group were spared.
A great many churches in all lands have been struck and sometimes destroyed by lightning, and at times assembled worship- ers and priests at the altar “have been singled out for death.
On the other hand, the celestial fire has seemed to be just in its wrath. On July 20, 1872, a negro named Norris, who had killed a mulatto in Kentucky, was about to be
FORCE FROM THE CLOUDS SEIZED THE IMPLE- MENT, CARRIED IT FIFTY YARDS AWAY AND TWISTED ITS PRONGS INTO CORKSCREWS,
not destroyed by lightning, three hun- dred and twenty- seven were struck while in houses and fifty-seven in barns. Cities are general- ly regarded as safer than the open coun- try. The city is roofed with much metal, and there is a - vast mass of steel in its frame; and tele- graph, telephone, and electric-light_ wires help to convey lightning harmlessly to earth. But the Federal scientists, after a long study of the comparative safety of places, conclude that if a cloud with a great store of energy should approach quickly “all of the wires in ten cities would not prevent it from discharging right and left.” It is held that the main difference in the statis- tics of destruction by lightning between the city and country is that the area beyond municipal confines is so much vaster than that. covered by the cities themselves. — During many ages the bay-tree was sup- posed to offer safe asylum from lightning- strokes. That is why the emperors crowned themselves with laurel-leaves. It marked the head that Jupiter should spare. But history has shown that every variety of tree’
: THE PRANKS OF LIGHTNING... _ 29
is subject to lightning-strokes. There is no place-on the planet that is absolutely safe.
Even fish in lakes are sometimes killed in great quantities by lightning. And in somé places farmers, .after a thunder - storm, have scooped up wagon-loads of fish that had the appearance of being boiled.
A strange freak of the lightning’s power was displayed in 1888, in a field in Europe where potatoes were growing. The vines were burned, and all the potatoes in the hills were baked as if in an oven.
How the Ancients Dodged Bolts.
At times electricity has shocked men deep in the lower levels of mines. Doubtless, however, caverns underground are the safest place during a thunder-storm. That is why Tiberius and Caligula, believing that lightning was an expression of revengeful gods, had subterranean passages built as places of refuge during lightning storms.
History records but one notable building that was never struck by lightning. This passed through a thousand years of elec- trical disturbances unscathed. It was Solo- mon’s Temple, and was completely overlaid with gold.
Yet, if every farmer and every city man could build his home of gold, there is no guarantee that that precious metal would safeguard his abode against the wrath of fire from the upper air. Lightning in va- rious places has shown a delight in rob- bing buildings of their gold. It snatched that metal from a great clock-steeple in Bohemia, and with the yellow grains gilded a window in the chapel. This delicate tra- cery was accomplished in a second’s flash. From the cornice of an altar-pillar in a church in Vienna, lightning took the gold and put it on a silver vase.
There has been much controversy among scientists in regard to lightning’s fantastic habit, at times, of imprinting curious photo- graphs upon victims. It is claimed by some of the investigators that the wonderful de- signs traced upon stricken people and ani- mals are the result of violent; action upon the tissues, and are not actual photographs. The more progressive scientists accept the photographic idea, believing that the light- ning contains power not even included in ‘R6ntgen and cathodic rays and radiography.
Frank and Charles Demmerle, brothers, of 372 East Sixteenth Street, Flatbush, were struck by lightning while bathing at Park- way Baths. On Frank’s breast was found a perfect likeness of a tree. Mme. Morosa, of Lugano, was struck by lightning but not- injured. Between her chair and the window a flower had stood in a vase. The light- ning photographed this flower on her leg.
Pm =
In September, 1857, a peasant woman at Seine-et-Marne was struck by lightning while minding a cow. The animal was killed, and the woman struck to the ground, but.she soon revived and afterward suffered no further injury from her mishap. On her breast the lightning had drawn a pic- ture of the cow. 3
The record of devastation lightning is great and increasing, Every summer adds larger lists of victims killed or strangely affected by this fire from heaven. There have been, however, a num- ber of authenticated cases of strange cures effected by lightning. 7 ;
For twenty years a paralytic had been vainly taking the waters of Tunbridge Wells. cured.
In the summer of 1807 lightning struck a man whose side had been paralyzed from infancy. The stroke restored to him the use of his limbs. One of his eyes had been weak. After the lightning-stroke he could read and write without spectacles. But, strange to say, the lightning had made him deaf.
Many reports have come in oe people cured of rheumatism by lightnifig-strokes. And lightning has caused the dumb to speak. ,
The effect of lightning upon trees is sometimes marvelous. Some of the effects may be explained by explosions caused by the sudden expansion of sap, but there are many fantastic incidents before which science is dumb.
A great oak, struck in the forest of Vibraye, had its mighty trunk reduced to powder by lightning and distributed as saw- dust over a circuit of fifty meters. But the top of the tree, with all its branches intact, was planted by the lightning-stroke where the trunk had stood. ;
Wonderful Tree-Surgery. —
In 1868, in the forest of Pont de Bus- siére, occurred perhaps the most beautiful, as well as the most mysterious, phenomena in all the pranks of lightning recorded by man. An English oak and a pine, growing ten yards apart, were struck at the same
moment by a lightning-flash. When it had
passed, it was found that the leaves of the oak had been transferred to the pine, and the needles of the latter tree were grafted on the oak.
This miracle attracted thousands of in- habitants; and scientists who investigated the case found that the trees thus trans-
formed by lightning bore their unaccus-—
tomed foliage until the time for the leaves to fall in the autumn.
caused by
Lightning struck him and he was |
WILLIAM TELL? WHO SAID HE WAS: oe OO MUTT
=
ersten, 5 re - : : rz or,
THE NEW MOVABLE TEE, DESIGNED TO ADD TO THE EXCITEMENT OF GOLF IN THE HITAWAK ae . Pe ei ISLANDS.— London Sketch. 5 Oa tae
she ss .
ah
CHAPTER I. The Hand of Fate.
OW could I dream that that piece of crumpled. paper, fluttering to the floor of the bank, was to be the terrible turning-point in my career—
that it was to be the first strand in the rope of circumstance that was to bind me?
It was about half past two in the afternoon and the bank was almost empty of customers. From the seat I occupied [ had a good view of persons coming in and passing out. My work was well in hand, and I could afford a moment now and then to look around me— to enjoy a quick glimpse of the folk who came with their pockets bulging with notes to pay into the bank—to watch those who presented checks, receiving for them the glit- tering gold shoveled out to them by the cashiers.
One hundred and twenty pounds a year! That was my salary. Two pounds ten shil- lings a week—minys certain’ shillings and pence deducted with scrupulous accuracy.
But I was happy. I was not such a fool as to allow myself to be made miserable by the better fortune of others. Some day I might be rich myself! I was young—only
twenty-one—healthy and strong, and I had-
no expensive tastes.
“Vou are a very unlucky fellow, Fawley, of course;”’ remarked one of the chief cash- jers to me one day. “ You are greatly handi- capped in life. I am glad to notice that you don’t let your worry make you miserable and discontented. There are some trials that
3L W E
3
bring a fellow fuck. There are sacrifices that are good investments.” *
He was speaking of the expense entailed upon me by the ill-health of my mother, who lived with me in the lodging of three rooms that I rented in a cheap suburb in the south of London.
“T am sorry to tell you, Mr.*Fawley, that there is practically no hope of your mother ever being well or strong. She will need careful nursing, and should have the best of food, and whatever delicacies you may be able to afford her.
“T—ahem! You are not rich, Mr. Faw- ley? Well, don’t hesitate to call upon me for any medical help I can give you. My ac- count can stand over till you find it con- venient. You see I attend a good many rich people, and one must take the lean with the fat?
Such were the doctor’s words. No, she would never be better. But there was not much sacrifice in all that I could do for her.
“God bless you, my boy! So you have got to run for your train, have you? Oh, those long days in the city! But you will be back as soon as your work is over. TI shall count the hours till I look upon your face once more —if I am to see it again.”
That was her great fear—that she might fall a victim to the malady that afflicted her, that it might have a sudden termination while I was absent.
If only some of thése golden sovereigns that that young fellow picked up off the counter as if he did not know how they came there, had been mine, how much happiness
through the doors.
“they might have purchased for that poverty-
“shadows. home of mine! The great door of the bank swung open Xone ‘more, and there entered the Man of
_ Fate.
He was tall, Don in clothes that marked him at once as the patron of a high-class tailor. One learns in a bank quickly to reckon up the signs of affluence or the re- verse. This man bore all the outward evi- dences of prosperity.
He glanced around him with swift, search-
ing eyes, and advanced to the counter. He
was smiling and chatting to the cashier while he produced a pocketbook, and searched ‘in it for the check he had to present:
-A most agreeable fellow, he was something ‘over forty years of age, his dark brown hair tinged with gray. While the cashier was seeing to the check, the stranger looked around.
His eyes fell on me. He started, smiled, nodded to me, and then, gathering up the gold and notes, he turned away to the door, while I wondered who he might be.
It was then the paper fluttered from his hand and fell to the floor. It was one of the notes, and he had not observed it. I sprang from my seat to call his attention to it, but I was too late. The stranger had vanished * a
“Tf you don’t mind, Mr. Fawley, you might run after him with it,” remarked the cashier, to whom I showed the note. “The gentleman is Mr. Resgrove. He is going on to Shlensons, the jeweler’s, he told me, to buy some friend of his a wedding present. You will find him only a few yards up the street.”
I did. Mr. Resgrove turned to me in amazement when I touched him on the arm,
and he found a hatless, panting man beside him. = BY. Jove! How careless of me!” he exclaimed, as he took the note. “I cannot afford to go throwing ten-pound notes about. And I have put you to some trouble. I canl-
not say how much I am indebted to you.”
He bowed to me and started in surprise.
“ By the way,” he said, “ you are the young fellow I saw in the bank at the desk, are you not? I was struck by your face. If you are not a son of old Hugh Fawley, of Man- chester, it is one of the most remarkable likenesses I ever met with.”
“Hugh Fawley was my father,” I replied “Tm afraid I don’t remember you, Mr. Res-
“grove.”
He laughed pleasantly. ;
“Tt would be strange if you did,” he said. “TI knew your father well, though. T am all
~ the more pleased to find that it is his son to whom I am indebted for a kindness.”
Hiya
THE LIVE WIRE. = a,
He, took out a little morocco-bound pocket- book and opened it.
“Give me your address,” he said. “ No, I am not going to insult you by sending you a reward, but I may be able to do you some good some @day. One never knows. You will never be the worse off for having one more friend.”
I gave it to him, and he walked away with a cordial shake of the hand.
“Resgrove! Resgrove!” exclaimed my mother, when I told her of what had hap- pened. ‘I remember no one of that name. But your father had many friends till dis- aster overtook him.”
“Promise me that you will do something for me—that you will do something for my sake.”
I was never more surprised than when Emily Resgrove, Mr. Resgrove’s niece, spoke those words to me. That night was the third time of our meeting at his house, and I had not
been favorably impressed by Miss Resgrove.
She was young—only about twenty-five or so—and many would have said she was de- cidedly handsome. But Miss Resgrove’s eyes, large as they were, had an expression which filled me with uneasiness. They were rest- less eyes—eyes that seemed to be too quick, too searching. While shé chatted to you carelessly, those eyes seemed to be full of un- rest and watchfulness.
Resgrove’s eyes would meet yours frankly, steadily, twinkling with fun and laughter. They placed youat your ease. There was no mistrusting them. I felt sorry for him in his niece. She could, I feared, be cruel— deceptive.
“Promise me that you will do something nes me—that you will do something for my sake.”
Mr. Resgrove had made much of that little obligation I had conferred upon him. No doubt, I imagined, his memory of my father led him to exaggerate the incident.
Moreover, he had taken a fancy to me. He had a friend, he informed me, who had a growing business in South America, in
which he hoped to be able to sectire me a
post at a salary which I should have to wait long, dreary years of drudgery in the bank to secure.
year, “with opportunities.” Mr. Resgrove was distinctly worth cul-
tivating. When I received that invitation to —
dine at his house that night “to meet a few friends,” I even thought it worth while to take a few shillings from our little saved-up store to get my dress-suit out of pawn, where it had rested for a long time.
I shall not forget that dinner, or the con-
He hoped it would prove worth | three hundred and fifty, or four hundred a ~
versation in the dining-room after the ladies had left ts. It turned on racing—a matter of which I was entirely ignorant.
“Warden is going to run to-morrow,” de- clared one of the guests, a young man with a small, sharp-featured face. “‘ Warden will romp home at nine to one against. I give you the information, Resgrove. If there is any one else here who wishes to make one pound into ten he can do so.”
Mr. Resgrove paid no heed to him, how- ever, and we joined the ladies in the drawing-room, where later on’ there was a dance. Miss Emily Resgrove had been my partner in the last waltz, and now we had left the room and. were standing in the conservatory . in the dim light, un- der the nodding palms and with the scent of the flowers around us.
“My uncle is occu-
pied at the card- table,” she had whis- pered. “Come with me. I have some- “thing I want to say to you.”
Then I looked at her in amazement as
THE SNARE. — ta
With a short, harsh laugh, Mr, Resgrove came forward.
“Sorry to interrupt your little ieresd-tia.” he said. “So it was to enjoy a quiet talk with Mr. Fawley, was it, that you stole away, my pretty niece, and left the guests wonder- ing at your absence? Well, now be off to them again. Be off, I say!”
He had walked to her. His voice was pleasant and playful, but as he came to her he laid his hands upon her shoulder. Be- neath that playful manner was it rage that made him shake ‘her so that his hand, getting entangled in» the beautiful neck- lace she wore, broke it from her neck?
I picked it up from the ground and gave it to her. Without a word, she slipped away, while Resgrove took my arm and led me away to the drawing-room.
“A@ queer Tittte girl,” he said. “What was it she was say-— ing to you?”
“Only speaking to ‘me about the house and your friends,” [ answered evasively.
“e Ah! { »
she spoke _ those He said no more, words: and we entered the “Promise you will brilliantly dighted do something for me room. But Miss —that you will do Emily was not there! something for my Resgrove, going to sake.” seek her, returned “I will certainly yg Hann ue MAD KRPr IN BIS OVERCOAT Pocker With the news that do anything I-can, pLasHeD FORTH WITH SOMETHING IN IT THAT She was indisposed Miss Resgrove,” I GLISTENED IN THE GAS-LIGHT. HE HAD with a headache. replied. “Unfortu- A REVOLVER POINTED AT MY FACE. I teft Mr. Res- nately, I am not a grove’s house that -
person who can generally prove very use- ful to others.” “Tt is something that you can do—some- thing that it is for your good you should o,” she whispered eagerly. “ Don’t ask me for reasons, but do what I tell you. Never set foot within these doors again. Avoid all you have ever thet in this house or that are connected with it. There! Don’t ask me.” She turned swiftly aside, bending her eyes to one corner of the conservatory. In the darkness of that spot my eyes, following hers, rested on a face—a white, disk-like thing in which there seemed to glisten two eyes like little fires. :
night with two commissions entrusted to me ~ to execute.
Mr. Resgrove had handed to me ten pounds ~ to put on Warden in the race the next day.
“Tf the horse goes down,” he laughed, “it won't do me any damage. If it wins, you get half.” It was not a commission I liked. I had never laid a penny on a horse in my life, - but I knew a man who was the agent of a book-maker.
The second commission was a stranger. one. As I was passing through the hall a door was softly opened, and a hand was held
‘out to me, with a little packet in it.
*
}
=
24> ea =
“Don’t speak. Take it,” said a voice that I recognized as that of Miss Resgrove.
- The packet held the broken necklet.
_ “Will you please take this to a jeweler whom you can trust?” ran the note that was with it. “Take it to-morrow morning and
_ ask him_ what he thinks of it, and what it
#
will cost to mend.” I came to the conclusion that Miss Res- grove must be a little mad. a <e
CHAPTER IIL. I Win a Bet.
LOOKED at the jeweler in amazement
when he laid down the necklet and in- formed me that the stones in it were false. It seemed ridiculous to me that a person in the position of Mr. Resgrove’s niece should wear false jewels.
And why, if the stones were false, had she handed the thing to me? Ladies surely do ‘not afford acquaintances such opportunities of discovering their deceptions.
“You need have no doubt about the mat- ter,” said the jeweler with a smile. ‘ The things would, no doubt, look very well on a person, but they won’t ‘stand any expert ex- amination.”
I stuffed the necklet in my pocket and walked out of the shop. What was the ‘meaning of it? Wds the thing actually handed to me by Miss Resgrove in order that I might learn the truth about it? That it might be a warning—something which might speak to me more eloquently than any words she might have written?
I remembered her strange request to me never to come to the house again. Was I to discover in that necklet a reason that she
dared not put in words:
- All here is false—all deception! ”
The discovery filled me with unwillingness to do what Mr. Resgrove had wished me to with ened to the betting on the horse-race. But if I did not carry out my part of the bargain would he not suspect, if the horse won, that I had really put the money on, and that I had pocketed the winnings?
The book-maker’s agent was in his accus- tomed haunt in the little court, the entrances
to which were watched by keen-eyed spies, °
to guard him from surprise by the police. He took the ten-pound note, and made an entry in his book. - “Race at two-thirty. Warden. Um! That’s a _long-shot. No one been on the beggar yet. If he wins you'll.be in luck, young gentleman. He'll start, I should say, at a long price.” _ Pondering the affair of the necklet, and wondering what the fate of Warden would be, I did my work in the bank that aay.
THE LIVE WIRE.
Warden had won! I could hardly believe my eyes as I read the fact in the evening newspaper. Warden had won, and the price against him had been eleven to one! ‘The book-maker would have one hundred and twenty pounds in his hands for me!
The bank work was over. The great books were closed for the day. I took my hat and stick, and emerged into the "street. As I walked along, a hansom cab came driving slowly by me.
As it passed, a piece of paper thrown from the person in the cab fell on the pavement before me. It was a piece of notepaper folded together. I took it up and, untwisting it, found written there these words:
“Tf you have gambled on a horse to-day and won, don’t call for any winnings.”
I crumpled the paper together, thrust it into my pocket, and walked on the quicker. It was a trick, I suspected, of the book- maker to avoid payment of what he owed me. What would Resgrove think if I did not get the money?
The book-maker received me with no out- ward sign of perturbation. He-nodded to me, looked in his book, and proceeded to make up a little roll of bank-notes, which he handed to me.
“You'll find that all right, I think,” he said, and that was all.
“What is the matter with you to-night, Dick?” asked my mother that evening. “ Aren’é you well?, Working too hard?”
Her watchful eyes, make keen with love, had detected that I was ill at ease, but I dared tell neither of the necklet incident nor of the bet, and I made some excuse. A short time later she kissed me good® night, and passed through the door to the little adjoining room that served as her chamber.
I felt relieved that those examining eyes were gone. I could think over things now. To-morrow I would send that money to Mr. Resgrove, and return the necklet to his niece. There was danger—danger in that house to which I had looked as the place from which such good fortune was to come to me. ;
There were steps in the little corridor, and a knock at the door. The door was opened, and a strange man appeared. He was tall, thin, with little gray eyes that glittered quickly around. His clothes were well-made, but showed signs of wear. %
“You are Mr. Richard Fawley,” he said, closing the door behind him, and returning — my glance of astonishment with a steady stare of the little gray eyes. “I believe in coming to business straight, Mr. Fawley.. You have been betting to-day? You backed a horse?”
= heard a slight noise behind me, arid turn-
THE SNARE.”
ing I saw that the door of my mother’s room was slightly opened. She had heard the stranger's voice, and had opened it to learn who was there. :
“Silence!” I gasped. “Silence!” My voice dropped toa whisper as I seized his
eet, flea
: = and turned upon the man who ‘had fol- lowed me. ;
“She is dead!” I shouted; “and you have killed her! You have killed her!”
I stood before him; my whole body trem- bling with rage and my hands clenched. In
a
SUDDENLY I FOUND MYSELF IN THE HANDS OF THOSE TWO MEN, MY ARMS FIRMLY GRASPED, WHILE RESGROVE THRUST THE HANDKERCHIEF TO MY FACE, 2
arm. “My mother is there,” I whispered. “She will hear what you say. Be silent, I tell you.”
“So your mother is in there, is she?” he answered, withdrawing his arm from my hand and speaking none the lower. “And she will hear all I have to say? Well, all the better. In case you are not reasonable she may help to make you so. I say that you were betting to-day, and that that has only to be brought to the notice of the bank for you to be—”
He stopped. From that little room, from .
behind the opened door, there came a sudden cry, followed by a noise as of some one falling. I turned and rushed into the room. She lay there on the floor. A great terror seized me as I bent over her. Then I rose,
that moment I felt that I had but one wish in the world—to spring upon him and tear him limb from limb. :
The hand he had kept in his overcoat- pocket flashed forth with something in it that glittered in the gaslight. He had a re- volver pointed at my face. His hand did not tremble.
“Steady! Steady!” he said, in cold, calm tones. “I could not guess, could I, that what I said would kill her? I reckon I would rather have had her live. Before you have done with me, Mr. Fawley, you'll prob- ably find I have enough little faults to answer for, without saddling me with any more than necessary.”
I turned from him. My rage was swal- lowed up in my sorrow. And, bending over :
Pgs = rod
oD ee ae . THE LIVE WIRE.
that lifeless figure, I burst into tears, weep- ing for a life that was past. —
Had I known, I might have wept at the same time for a life that was to be lived.
CHAPTER III. Blackmail.
ND now, what do you want?”
That stranger who had descended so unexpectedly upon me—that man who had entered our little sitting-room, bringing, as it were, the very dart of death with him— had remained there while I had laid that stricken form upon the bed, while the hastily summoned doctor had examined her, and turned to me with a grave face to tell me ~ what I knew so well already, but what I
had striven madly to reject as impossible.
T left that chamber, leaving there her whose sorrows now were all over, and stumbled rather than walked into the little sitting-
room. For some moments I was unconscious of the man seated there. When at last my eyes fell on him my blood boiled in my veins, and my hands clenched as I thought of how she had died.
: It was he who had killed her! It was
those brutal words of his which, falling on
_-her ears, had dealt the fatal stroke to that feeble life! And she had died, believing me false, untrue, unworthy of her as a son!
‘I turned to him, and the expression of some of that rage I felt must have shown itself in my face, for he leaped from the chair in which he had been ensconced.
Drawing himself to his greatest height, he thrust forward his ugly face, with his little, glittering eyes gleaming into mine, with no shade of pity or remorse in them.
“What do you want?” I demanded. “ Tell me, and go quickly.”
“T shall go as quickly as I want to,” he replied. ‘Come, what is the good of being huffy with me? How did I know that my words would upset the old lady so?”
“T am in no’mood to listen to you now,” I replied, walking to the door and opening it. “ You must come some other time.”
“T’ve had a pretty big experience of the world, Mr. Richard Fawley,” he sneered, not stirring from the spot where he stood, “and I’ve learned that, in a good many things, there is no time like the present. No, no, Calling again won’t do. You don’t—
“You miserable scoundrel!” I shouted. “Will you go, or shall I throw you out? No!” I drew myself together, remembering
_ her who lay in the next room, and how un- seemly it would be to have a struggle there. “J will summon a_ policeman, and have you turned out!”
The man laughed.
“That’s good,” he sneered. “Do you
know what summoning a policeman means?
It means ruin and disgrace—disgrace to her name!” He waved his hand to the door leading into the little inner chamber.
Disgrace to her name! The words brought —
me to a sudden check.
“Tell me what you mean,” I said; “ and in as few words as possible.”
“ Certainly,” he replied. “ That’s business. What I mean is. this, Mr. Fawley. To-day you had a bet on a horse. Ah, you didn’t think that anybody else would make it their concern to learn that, did you? Well, you were mistaken.
“And you won, too. You did well. Eleven to one against Warden, and you laid a ten- pound note. You’ve a hundred and twenty pounds in your pocket as you stand there.”
“Tf you think to rob me of it,” I ex- claimed hotly, “you are mistaken. For all that revolver in your pocket, you are not going to handle one of those notes.”
“We will see about that,” he retorted. “If you are sensible, I shall handle the whole of them—the whole of them, Mr. Fawley—or else the bank knows to-morrow morning that their highly esteemed and steady young clerk, in whom they place such implicit reliance, backs horses, and knows how to find a win- ner, too.”
The fearful truth flashed across me then. The man was a blackmailer. I felt that there was a struggle before me, and nerved myself as well as I could to meet this man. I laughed at him defiantly.
“You mean,” I said, “that unless I hand you. a sum of money, you will inform the manager of my bank that I have been. bet- ting?”
He nodded.
“You have realized the position exactly,” he replied. ‘‘ Unless you hand me the money, I shall consider it my duty to tell them all about it. You know the rules—immediate discharge, and without a character, too.”
’ He chuckled. Some of the consternation that his words caused me must have shown itself in my face, hard as I endeavored to con- trol it. Fool that I had been! I knew the
‘rule. What madness had made me forget it
when I undertook Mr. Resgrove’s commis- sion?
“Ah!” he chuckled; “I see you know all about it. Well, unless you make it worth my while—I’m not so hard-hearted nor such a fool as not to be able to blink at a bit of a spree on the part of a young chap—I inform your manager to-morrow morning... And the price of my silence is one hundred and ten
pounds.
“Tl not be hard. Tl leave you the ten-.
,
ve
THE SNARE.
pound note you laid on. There are a good many fellows in my position who wouldn’t do that.”
I walked to the door, and threw it open.
“Tam not such a weak fool as to agree to such terms,” I replied. “There is the door. Go! Go, or I shall throw you out!”
He paused for a moment, and then strode forward.
“T'll go,” he said; “ but don’t forget your- self, Mr. Richard Fawley. I will give you a night to think it over. My name is Thomas Smaile. As the doors of the bank open at ten to-morrow, you will see me there to tell, the manager. If you are sharp, you may stop me. If you have the notes ready, you can pass them to me, and Thomas Smaile disap- pears out of your path forever. Don’t forget yourself, Mr. Fawley, and good-by till then.”
As I took my place at my desk-in the bank the next morning, one question Was beating at my brain. Should I see the hateful figure of that man entering the bank when the great doors were flung open as the clock struck
Stent
“You are not looking well, Fawley. What's
up? ”
It was one of the cashiers who spoke to me.
“Great heavens, man! What are you doing here?” he exclaimed as I told him of my mother’s death. “The manager would ~ never have expected you. I'll tell him, and* he’ll send you home.”
He was/moving away, when [ laid my hand upon his arm.
“No, no,” I gasped. “I'd sooner work: It will help me to forget.”
I opened the big account books that lay on my desk, with fingers that shook so that they could hardly grasp the covers. My eyes could not turn themselves from the door, save to watch the finger of the clock slowly dragging itself on to the fatal hour.
May. those who say I was a coward never learn by bitter experience what torture as I endured means. But I flattered myself, as I sat there, waiting with the roll of notes ready in my breast pocket, that I might be bold enough when I saw him come to’ defy him and let him do his worst.
The hour sounded. I heard the great bars that guarded the bank doors clang aside.
~The doors were thrown open. There was a moment’s patise, and I gave a gasp of relief. Then my heart gave a great bound, and my ‘blood ran cold in my veins.
The man had entered, and was advancing toward the cashier. A smile curled his thin lips as he looked toward me and nodded. I jumped from my stool and walked swiftly forward to meet him.
“Ah, Mr. Fawley,” he said, holding out a_
Se eee: * pS hand and nodding to the cashier, who re- garded him with eyes alight with quick sus- picion. “Iam a friend of Mr. Fawley’s, sir, just come to do him a little service in the sad — circumstances in which he is placed.’
He was robbing me while he spoke with that evil smile on his face, as surely as if he had taken that money from me at the muzzle of the revolver I knew he carried in his pocket. A moment later he disappeared through the great’ doors with steps that seemed to swagger with triumphant villainy.
“Humph! Don’t think much of your friend, Fawley!” exclaimed the cashier as I returned to my desk.
His eyes were on my face while he spoke. He did not think any the better of me, it was clear, for having a man like Smaile claiming my acquaintance. :
CHAPTER IV. The House of Darkness.
| GOT through the day somehow. That
night I should have to see Mr. Resgrove and explain to him what had become of the money. The loss of the half-share in those winnings did not trouble me. I had always hated betting. Money gained in that way would, I felt sure, do me no good.
Mr. Resgrove would surely not only for- give me, but be sorry that he had been the means of leading me into such a terrible position. If he showed signs of anger, I would, I resolved, pay him the money by instalments. ~ Scraping it together would be a big job, but I would manage it in time. Resgrove was wealthy, and could wait.
As I turned in at the gate that admitted one to the gravel path under the old, smoke- blackened trees that shadowed it, the path seemed strangely dark under those trees, -
Darkness !
The house stood before me dark—black against the night. I stared at it in wonder— _ that house I had seen so brilliantly lighted the night before, the house in which there had been gathered that merry company, in — which there had been that music and dancing.
The unexpected sight filled me with a feeling of disaster. I was about to” turn back, when I caught sight of dim rays of
light struggling out through the chinks of the
closed shutters of a room at the side. =
There was some one there. I resolved to ring the bell and make inquiry.
“You want Mr. Resgrove, do you? inside.”
The man who opened the door to me had lighted one of the gas-lights in the hall. — Now he closed the door behind me.
“Mr. Resgrove and his folk have had to
¥
Come
38 THE LIVE WIRE.
¥
go into the country,” he said in a harsh voice. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“Before I tell you,” I answered, “I should like to know who you are. I have not seen you here before, as far as I can remember.” _ “No,” he answered; “you have certainly not seen me here before. I know a good deal of Mr. Resgrove’s business, though, and in his absence am managing his affairs.”
“My business is private,” I said. “It con- cerns Mr. Resgrove himself, and can be told to no one else.”
A look of annoyance crossed his face.
“So it’s private business, is it?” he re- marked. “ Well, you will find it to your ad- vantage to make a clean breast of it, young man. I’m Detective Bladon. Resgrove, as you call him, and his folk were— But never mind that.
“Ym here in charge, and it’s part of my duty to question callers. If you are an mno- cent, it will be your best plan to tell me all you know. If you are one of the gang, you will doubtless keep your mouth shut, and I shall have to find out for myself.”
I reeled back, and a cry of despair broke from my lips, echoing through the hall. In that moment there flashed before me the meaning of all that had happened. ‘The events of the past few days had all been parts of a trap!
The fallen bank-note, the invitations to Resgrove’s house, the backing of the horse, the visit of Smaile, the blackmailing—they were all parts of a trap to place me in the power of a man who would hold me in his grasp, helpless as a child, and make me his tool by the threat of shameful exposure and ruin, unless I helped him in some scheme of villainy against the bank in which I was employed.
Would they believe me if I told all now? I must risk it. I moistened my lips with my tongue to speak. The keen-eyed man before me nodded his head to spur me on.
Then he suddenly bent forward, his head down, his nostrils quivering. He looked at me like a great hound whose ears had caught some sound of danger or who had snuffed the scent of it in the air. Then he darted past me to the back of the house with swift, noiseless feet, and vanished, leaving me mo- tionless with wonder.
From the part of the house into which he had disappeared there came a sudden cry— the. cry of a man calling for assistance in hands that nearly choked him, and the noise of scuffling feet. I darted after him,
The room from which the noise had come was in pitch darkness as I entered it, but some hand touched the electric switch, and the place was flooded with light. :
Before me on the floor lay the man I had seen in the hall. While two men grasped his arms, another held a handkerchief to his
face. The smell of chloroform filled the place =
with a sickly odor. The man with the hand- kerchief spoke to one of his companions.
“The chap is pretty helpless now,” he said. “You hold the thing to his nose till he is fairly off.”
He rose from his knees and faced me. It was Resgrove himself.
“Good evening, Mr. Fawley,” he said, with his usual smile, but with an expression in those eyes of ‘his I had never before seen there—an expression of fierce excitement and grim determination. ‘That fellow lying there has let you into something of the ex- planation of all this. Yes; he and his chaps nearly had us. We only escaped by the skin of our teeth—so hurriedly, that I have had to come back to clear off some possessions too valuable to be left behind.
“Your arrival was most opportune. It diverted that fellow’s attention. ‘By Jove, you could not have done better if you had come on purpose. I dare say that when that chap comes round he’ll be prepared to say that you did come on purpose.”
One of the men bending over the senseless detective raised himself and addressed Res- grove with an oath.
“The things, you fool!” he cried. “ Will you stay here jawing when we may be pounced on any moment? The things!” ie darted a contemptuous glance at im.
“There is no hurry,” he replied. “This is the very last place in the world in which the police would expect us to be. However, I will set to work. You will see to this gentle- man. Let him sit in that chair.” He waved his hand to one, and his voice suddenly assumed a tone of terrible threat. “You will sit there, Mr. Fawley, and make your- self as comfortable as you can.”
He turned to one of the men.
“You will not harm Mr. Fawley,” he re- marked as I seated myself, “while he sits quietly. If you attempt to escape or make yourself a nuisance,” he nodded to me, “you will only have yourself to thank, Mr. Fawley, for being a dead man.”
Stupefied and crushed by what I had seen
and heard, I sat there, how long I do not know. At last Resgrove appeared in the doorway, and beckoned one of his com- panions to him. Then, suddenly, I found myself in the hands of those two men, my arms fully grasped, while Resgrove thrust the handkerchief to my face. : When I regained my sense and looked
around me, the detective and some policemen
were beside me. : “
,
‘THE SNARE.
“Of course, what you say may be true,” he remarked, as I told him my story; “but it looks precious like a plant. You'll have an opportunity of explaining to a magistrate, anyway.”
For three weeks I lay in prison, and each week I appeared in the police-court dock.
“Your story,” said the magistrate at last, “is a remarkable one. In its most impor- tant points it is uncorroborated. The book- maker, for instance, swears that he never made any such bet as you speak of. On the other hand, a bank-note which has been traced to Resgrove has been found in your possession.” It was the ten-pound note he had- handed to me.
“There is evidence that you have been in his company, that you visited at his house, and that he was all that time- bent on designs in which the cooperation of an accomplice in the bank might have aided him. All these things are gravely suspicious; at the same time, they hardly justify me in sending the case to a jury. You are discharged.”
Free! Free once more!
No, not free. In the bondage of suspicion and shame! The eyes of all men seemed to glance at me askance. I hid myself till dusk had gathered before I made my way to that cemetery where my mother had been buried while I had been in prison. The attendant showed me her°grave and left me.
He must have forgotten me. Unconscious of time, I remained there while the darkness of night fell around me.
Suddenly I leaped to my feet. been laid on my shoulder.
Facing me-in the night gloom was the figure of a woman!
I was so amazed that I could not easily
find words, and the woman broke the silence first. * “T expected you would come here, Rich- ard Fawley,” she said. “ While you were in prison I had no means of communicating with you. There were those clever enough to have intercepted any letter which I might have sent you. I had to deceive the eyes of those who are watching you.”
“Of those who are watching me?”’ I cried. “Who are they?”
“Tam not here to reply to questions,” she answered. “I shall answer none if you ask them. Yet I think you might accept my ‘presence as an assurance that I am a friend of yours. I came here at risk to myself.
A hand had
Even they ”’—I could see, even through the
5 darkness, that she shuddered as she spoke—
“will hardly suspect me of being here, nor will they lightly intrude in such a = as this.”
“Who are they?” I ached again.
“T have told you that I am not here to
i
: 39 answer questions,” here to warn you. : “Get away from London—from England, if you can. Disgraced as you are—marked down by a brand that will sever you from the some new place, some place where you are not known.
she said. “I am only
what even now you are stspected to be.” They say that those whom the gods wish
companionship of honest men—seek.
Beware of the toils that, if you. remain here, will drag you down to become —
to destroy, they first drive mad. As she spoke those words, I seemed to see all the
purpose of her being there.
“You are exceedingly kind,” I answered
bitterly. ‘‘ You come here—you counsel me to fly. Shall T tell you why?”
The figure nodded its head.
“You want me to fly,” I said, “because Resgrove and his gang know that, when they are. caught, I
gain them the punishment they deserve, my innocence will be made so clear that no one will doubt it. How much did Resgrove pay
shall be the chief witness — against them. When I bear that witness and _
you to come here and try to frighten me?”
ez
“How much! How much!” She gasped the words as though they choked her. “ How much did Resgrove pay me? You took on me then as your enemy?” :
“T look upon you as you are,” I cried angrily. ‘“I have been tricked so far, but I will be tricked no longer.”
A deep sigh escaped her.
“Yes, you have failed,’ I went on. “Go
back to Resgrove and his people, and tell them that you have failed. I refuse to fly.
I defy them, and they shall find what it is to try and wreck an innocent life! ”
She turned and the darkness quickly swallowed her up. As she disappeared the very gloom which had enshrouded my heart seemed. to lift itself. I would be rid of the suspicion and disgrace which had attached itself to me, even as I was rid of that black figure.
I presented myself before the Apeaed caretaker of the cemetery, and explained to him how I had been inadvertently locked in. Then I emerged from that gloomy place into the lighted roadway.
I seemed relieved of a great burden. I would yet prove myself worthy of her who slept there so peacefully, and the world should do justice to Richard Fawley. ~
CHAPTER V. — Monsieur Lamonde. EEM down on your luck,
old boy. = J What’s the matter?” .
Tt was between miu and one o'clock
)
when that friendly voice fell upon my ears, as I was stumbling along a London street in the West End. I had parted with the last of my possessions in a bitter struggle to obtain employment.
Week after week had gone by, and each day had brought its blasted hopes that I should obtain a situation of some kind which would at least provide me with a means of
living. Those terrible words of the magis-
trate, “although there be grave suspicion,’ had beaten me back from every door to which I had applied.
Vhere were you last employed? What is your character? Richard Fawley? Why, bless my soul, aren't you the man there was such a fuss about a few weeks ago?”
Such were the questions asked me where- ever I went. It was as if I had presented myself with some deadly plague upon me. The very offices to which other people re- sorted in order to obtain employment were shut to me.
“ Richard Fawley. H’m, the fellow who was mixed up in Resgrove’s affair. Sorry we haven’t got any place that will suit you. Not a single situation on our books we could recommend you to apply for.”
That was what I heard at office after office.
“Look here, Fawley,’ said one who was
' more friendly than the rest, as he banged
his book to when I gave him my name, “don’t you think it’s a bit thick coming to me, and asking me to recommend you to a client? He might take you, you know, not
‘knowing who you are—and mind you, I
don’t say you’re not as innocent as a daisy— but if he cut up rough, what could I say? He’d say a nice agency that, and all that kind of thing!”
His words sounded the more terrible to me in the state of weakness to which I had come through want of food. I staggered
-back from the table at. which I had been
standing and sank into a chair.
“hen what is to become of me?” I eried.> =~
He sprang to my side and laid his hand upon my shoulder.
“Took here,” he said, “don’t go fainting, or anything of that kind. I have only put a thing to you which ought to be as plain to you as the nose upon your face. What you're to do, I don’t know. It needs all a fellow’s wits to get along himself without tackling the problems of other people. You must think it out for yourself, and here’s a bit that may serve to keep you going while you do it.”
He pressed a half-crown into my hand as he spoke.
Now, this night when the stranger accosted
4
_THE LIVE WIRE. : :
me in the West-End street, I was homeless, hopeless, and again penniless.
“Seem down on your luck, old boy. What's the matter?”
I mumbled some words in reply, I hardly knew what, and shuffled on. We were pass- ing under a gas-light, when he laid his hand upon my shoulder, and brought me to a sud- den halt, placing himself before me‘ and look- ing at me with a keen eye.
“Your face is like a book to me,” he said. “You're some fellow that the world is treating roughly. I should say you hadn’t had a good square meal for three days.”
He was a man of about forty-five, tall, and well made, with a handsome face. His overcoat, thrown back, revealed that he was in evening dress.
“T can read you like a book,” he said again with a little laugh. ‘‘ No, you haven’t had a square meal for three days. I can see that in your eyes, and what’s more, you don’t think you’re going to get one. Not got many friends, eh? Why, you look upon me as if I wanted to rob you.”
He broke into a laugh at the idea,
“Well, I’m not. I’m one who can help a lame dog over a stile. Perhaps I’ve been a lame dog myself once. Look here, here's
~ my-card. Call upon me to-morrow, and I'll
see what I can do for you; and as I don’t want to be worried by a gentleman who looks like a ghost that has lost its grave and couldn’t find its way back, take that for a bed, and good dreams!”
He strode away with a laugh, leaving me there transfixed with astonishment, clutching that card and the coin he had thrust with it into my hand. It was: gold—a sovereign!
It gleamed there in the palm of my hand, speaking of food, shelter, rest. More than all that, it spoke a message of hope to me— of the confidence and the sympathy of its giver. What a fool I should be, in my hope- less state, if I did not make the best of both.
Tt was through the man that I met so strangely that night that I became man- servant to M. Lamonde.
“Tt’s horribly awkward history, Fawley,” said my new-found friend, when I told him my story. “I will see what I can do. You will only get a situation with some people who are a little above the ordinary narrow- minded views of the world.”
Monsieur and his wife, Mme. Lamonde, were certainly not people of the ordinary world. Their flat in the West End was superbly furnished. Lamonde professed to belong to an ancient family in France with large estates.
I very quickly came to the conclusion that his chief income was obtained by means of dinners he gave to rich young fools—dinners
THE SNARE.
M, LAMONDE WENT CRASHING BACK AMONG THE GILDED DRAWING-ROOM CHAIRS AND LITTLE TABLES, | _AS I DASHED IN THE SCOUNDREL’S FACE THE HANDFULS OF GOLDEN COIN.
at which the champagne passed round quickly and over which Mme. Lamonde presided, sparkling i in sham diamonds. Cards followed in that little quiet room in which, as I came in sometimes to bring refreshments to the players, my eyes rested on heaps of gold and bank-notes lying on the table. Monsieur and his wife were swindlers— card-sharpers—cheats. I hated myself for ever assisting in their designs as I helped those fools who played with them to the -Jiquor which made them play more and more incautiously. But monsieur and madame were exceed- ingly kind to me. I could hardly understand - how it was they were so ready to excuse the blunders I made. How was I, fresh from a bank desk, to know‘of the duties of a waiter? - -"You are a bit of what they call the plockhead, Fawley,” remarked the gentleman one day when I had made some unusually stupid mistake.
learn—we live and learn. We must have pa-
“But, my child, we live and’
tience—patience. There is much of virtue in patience, my son.’
It was impossible to help liking a man who treated one like that, and madame was his equal.
But one night there ceased to be virtue in patience. Even now my blood tingles in my veins at the remembrance of the affair that happened.
Young Lord Vallence was, Mme. Lamonde had told me, to be one of the dinner-party. He was a young fellow with light yellow hair, and a face full of the insolence of wealth. He was enormously rich, and his manner was that of one who despised all who were not as lucky as he was himself. __
The dinner was in full progress when some action of mine seemed to catch his lordship’s eye. He fixed his single gold-rimmed eye- glass in his eye and stared at me.
=f say, Lamonde,” he exclaimed, “ ‘your cooking is splendid, your wine is of the best. I flatter myself that I know such
wae
Ding: What then is the blot on the whole aivairer: =
“The blot? Ha, ha! Your lordship was always fond of the little joke,” exclaimed M. Lamonde. “But no”—as he caught. sight of Lord Vallence’s face—‘ it is not a joke? Then I am the most miserable of men.”
“T's not your fault, Lamonde, I guess,” ‘snapped his lordship. ‘“ You’re a smart fel- low, but one never knows when one may be being victimized. Come here, fellow!”
These last words were addressed to me.
“What do you call this chap?” he asked Lamonde.
“Smith,” replied Lamonde, with a quick glance at me.
Vallence laughed derisively.
“Smith! That’s the flame he passes under, is it?” he exclaimed. “M. Lamonde and ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you that you have had the honor of having your glasses filled by a fellow who ought to be, doing time in one of her majesty’s prisons.”
He took up his glass of wine and, rising from his chair, advanced to me, while [ stood astounded and gasping with the shame of that denunciation. I heard a little scream ‘break from the lips of the ladies at the table. ~ “Vou are mistaken — surely mistaken, Lord Vallence,” cried M. Lamonde. “The young fellow is as the day honest. It is a hideous mistake.”
oa
Lord Vallence drew nearer and nearer to.
me.
“Tt was an accident that took me to the
court when I saw that nice young chap in the dock,” he cried. “Look here, fellow,” he sneered to me, “you are Fawley, the bank- er’s clerk—the chap who escaped by the skin of his teeth from the penal servitude that you deserved. And you have the impudence to wait on ladies and gentlemen. Take that!”
Before I could guess his intention he had dashed the contents of his wine-glass in my face. I darted out my clenched fist at the sneering face that was thrust forward to me, and would have leaped upon him, but some of the men had jumped from their seats at the table and threw their arms round me, and hustled me from the room.
“You are a liar and a scoundrel!” I cried as I was thrust out of the door. From that room there came the hoarse laugh of Lord Vallence rejoicing in my shame.
My shame! Can any one who has not passed through such an experience imagine what it was? But for a trick of fate I might have been among those persons who sat at that table! I was a mere waiter on
THE LIVE- WIRE.
And that glass of wine in my face—that cruel outrage on my self-respect—made my pulses beat with the desire for revenge.
My opportunity came a week later. Lord Vallence had, I had reason to believe, been often to that house, but Lamonde and madame had kept me out of-his sight.
Mme. Lamonde was in tears. She was pretty, and she had been kind to me. I would do much for madame.
“Fawley,” she said to me, her face white, her hands clasping at the necklet that en- circled her throat, “we have been kind to you, have we not?”
“You have,” I said. never forget.”
“Never forget!” she cried. get!”
“When I was starving, when no one else would help me,” I replied, “ you took me and gave me bread and shelter.”
“You remember that,” she said. remember that you will help us.”
“Tf I can help you, you may count on me,” I answered.
She looked at me as if even then in doubt, but nerving herself to speak.
“ And you remember Lord Vallence?” she
“How kind, I can
“Never for-
“Tf you
asked.
My face gave her my reply. Lord Vallence, she told me, was to come there that night. He would play cards with her husband. He would bring his own cards. He suspected M. Lamonde.
“Tf my husband wins a thousand pounds from Lord Vallence—Lord Vallence to whom a thousand is nothing—we are saved,” she said.
“T most heartily hope he will,” I said.
“But my husband will not win if you do not help us,’ she answered.
How shall I describe that night when, hidden in the room, I signaled to M. La- monde the cards that the man who sat oppo- site to him held in his hand? I could not see Lord Vallence’s face. I did not hear his voice. But from my hiding-place I could see the cards he held, and I signaled each one to the calm-faced man who played with him.
It was my revenge for the affront Lord Vallence had passed upon me. that they played I remembered the glass of wine Lord Vallence had thrown in my face. And now each moment he was paying for it with his gold!
The game was over at last.
the hall to watch Lord Vallence’s face as he left the house—the house where he was leaving so much of those riches that made him hard and cruel to others who were poor.
Each moment’
: 4 I crept from : my hiding-place, and waited in a corner of
those who might, had fate been kind to me, — I staggered back as I caught sight of his —
have waited on me.
face, as I heard his voice.
-
THE SNARE.
“So you have got the better of me by five thousand pounds, Lamonde,” he said care- lessly. “What a fool I am! That money might have gone to some good purpose, I
suppose. And here I am—rooked out of it.” He shrugged his shoulders.
I caught a good sight of him as he lighted his cigar, and went away humming a tune.
The next minute I was in the deserted drawing-room with M. and Mme. Lamonde. The electric lights threw their gleams over monsieur, with his face aglow with triumph— over madame, with her glittering sham dia- monds and her pale haggard face.
“Vou don’t knock at the door, Fawley,” said M. Lamonde, with a little laugh. “ When will you learn the manners of a man who has to wait on a gentleman?”
“When I have a gentleman to wait on, perhaps,” I answered. “Not a swindler.”
Madame turned’ pale. Monsieur laughed, and puffed at the cigarette he was smoking.
He nodded to me.
“To-night,” I said, “I have acted the part of an accomplice in a piece of swindling. You know how I came to do so, how I hated Lord Vallence and, in my hatred, would have him suffer.”
Lamonde nodded to me.
“Quite natural,” he said. “After the manner in which Lord Vallence behaved to you, I don’t wonder at it. Well, you have had your revenge. Lord Vallence has paid for it to the tune of five thousand pounds.”
His hands went to his pocket, and he drew “out and laid before me heaps of glittering coins on the table.
“ And there is your reward,” he said.
“ But the man who lost that money to you,”
(To be continued. )
43
I said, have had my revenge.”
M. Lamonde looked at me for a— moment, and then he laughed.
“Ah! You have found that out,’ he ex- claimed. “Look at that golden heap, Faw- ley, and listen to me. Fix your eyes on the
‘is not the man on whom I would :
golden heap while I speak to you. I will be x
candid. Every word- shall be true.
“We wanted a man who would help us to-
night, when the real Lord Vallence should come here, and we could find none but you. We played a false Lord Vallence on you some days ago, so that we might use you— reckon on your feeling of revenge to help us in our little trick against the real man. You did your work beautifully.”
He paused, with a little laugh, eying me.
the while.
“T am perfectly straight with you now,
Fawley,” he said. “ You would never have helped us if you had not got your little imaginary grievance against Lord Vallence. Well, we managed that, and here we are. There are one hundred sovereigns there, and you are welcome to them”—he paused for an instant—“as our accomplice.”
Fool that I had been! That affront passed on me at the dinner—that hateful false Lord
Vallence that monsieur had imposed upon — I had helped him
me—all was.a falsehood! to rob an innocent man—a man who had never done me wrong.
M. Lamonde went crashing back among the gilded drawing-room chairs and the little tables, at which he vainly clutched to prevent
his fall, as I dashed in the scoundrel’s face the handfuls of golden coin that he had placed on the table.
THE SOFT ANSWER WINS.
T happened on an ocean liner, the cap- tain of which is as excellent a diplomat as he is a sailor. On this occasion the wife of one of the most influential directors of the line was having her first experience with the Atlantic. She was an imperious woman, accus- tomed. for many years to her own way. When the ship began to roll and the motion
became disagreeable, she promptly sent for”
the captain. -An attempt to substitute a steward was dismissed with scorn, and the
ence of the crashes of the vessel de- manded without delay. .
_ The second Sormmand ‘produced the purser, but he, too, was sent unceremoni- ously about his business. Then the third
--and the first officer successively tried to
sacrifice themselves for the peace of mind of their chief. It was all useless, and at last the captain reluctantly appeared.
“T wish you to stop this rolling at once,” said the great lady in her coldest tones. “Tt is very disagreeable, and it has gone on
quite long enough.”
““
“Madam,” replied the tactful seaman, ship, as you. know, is feminine, and if she wants to roll I fear I can no more stop her than I could help coming here when you wished to see me.”
A wan smile passed over the unhappy —
woman's features, now assuming a greenish hue, and she closed her eyes. “Very well, sir,” she murmured, roll.” The nian obeyed.
“Tet her
ay
~—
tA
Ink When
a Bet.
| else could you put it?”
He Threw a Bottle of
Asked to Decide
/4 ORRILL GODDARD, the well- known New York editor, was finishing up a hard day’s work the other day when the office-
boy reported that a delegation from the engine-house would like to interview the “Query Editor.” “ Bring them in,” said Goddard, “I guess I can fill the Query Editor’s place.”
“The question, sir,” said the chair- man of the delegation, “is an important one and more difficult to answer than you might suppose. We have wagered a matter of three cigars on it, which adds to the interest.”
“Tire away,” replied Goddard, “ Tem- pus is fugiting.”
“Well, you see it is this way,” ex- plained the spokesman: “over in our district there were two men named John Jinks, and they were father and son. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly. Proceed.”
“Well, last night they were both burned to death, and in making up a list of those who lost their lives the boys insist on putting down John Jinks,
_ senior, and John Jinks, junior.”
“Quite right,” asserted Goddard. “That’s what we came to ask about.
- Of course, it would be clear who was ©
meant, but technically—”
“Technically, it is perfectly right,” interrupted Goddard.
courer
“Sure! Of course I’m sure. How
jo 7 -
“WHAT DID THE
BY SAM-LOYD.
EDITOR SAY?
And the Blot On the Wall
Tells What He Said.
“Oh, if you are so dead sure, we won't dispute it, but the technicalities should be taken into consideration. That's the way it seems to me.”
“What in thunder have technicalities to do with the case?” thundered God- dard.
“Well,” said the spokesman with much. deliberation. “I figure it out somewhat differently. You see, the old man lived down-stairs, and the boy on the top floor. Consequently, it stands to reason that the old man burned first.”
“Well, what of it?” demanded God- dard.
“Why, when the old man died the young man ceased to be junior, conse- quently, there was no John Jinks, Jr., to die. That’s the way I figure it out, but, of course, a Query Editor knows best, and if you say—’
The chairman of the delegation dodged a bottle of red ink which barely grazed his head, and precipitately with- drew, but as I chanced to be present and heard the editor’s ejaculation as the bottle was thrown, I wish to say, per- haps because I am a puzzlist, or a natural born palmist, or it may be sheer imagination—but when TI see ~ that smudge F can read the exclamation of the editor just as if it were printed in poster type, so I wish to know if it is as clear to others as it is to me. Can you tell what the editor said from the ink-daub reproduced at the top of this page? :
44.
= rs : ; 2
a
_ ‘THE EXPERIENCED CADDIE (MORE IN SORROW THAN IN ANGER): “ AIN’T THERE VO WORD FOR ‘Tr, sin?”—London Sketch, ; : 3
= 45
= HE’’ ALLEN, so Theodore Roosevelt said when he was police commissioner, was “ the
wickedest man in New York.”
Yet Henry ‘Ward Beecher once saved his life.
Allen put out a barkeeper’s eye with the lighted-end of a cigar.
Yet he gave fifty thousand dollars to Lincoln’s second campaign fund.
An indictment for murder stood against Allen twenty-two years.
Yet he adopted three waifs merely be- cause he liked children.
Allen’s gambling-house was .taided one hundred and twelve times, and he was ar- rested so often that he could never remem- ber the dates.
Yet in time of war he risked his own life to serve with the Federal armies, and while acting as a spy was sentenced to death. Mr. Beecher discovered his plight just in time to save his life by despatching a hasty tele- gram to Secretary Stanton, who instantly ordered his release.
This strange man died the other day at the age of seventy-five, after having spent three hundred thousand dollars to keep out of jail. He was the son of a Methodist preacher, and passed his early years around the lower end of Manhattan Island, where he was born. He was employed by a Maiden Lane tailor on the particular day which marked the determining of his career. He had been despatched to the Astor House with a new uniform for General Winfield Scott. Before he reached the hotel, he be-
came involved in a fight with another small —
boy. Next to young Allen’s opponent, the new uniform suffered the most damage, and “The” wisely decided to hunt for another job.
© Billy” Dancer, rated then as New York’s leading gambler, and whose house, at No. 8 Barclay Street, was the scene of many “big plays,” wit- nessed the boyish battle, and was so impressed by the gameness and skill of
Allen that he paid for the ruined uniform ~
and put the lad to work around the gam- bling-house. There he rapidly acquired the rudiments of the profession, and there also was shaped the character that later fur- nished the toughest problem for the New York courts and the police. The ambitious boy took deep into his heart Dancer’s rules of conduct of a “gentleman sporting man”:
Never play against another man’s game.
Never take a long chance.
Never take a partner in any sporting enterprise. :
Never violate a confidence, whatsoever the provocation.
Never discuss or make public. the play of your patron.
Never tell a lie unless to shield some
one who can’t face the music, whether it.
be yourself or some other man. 2 Never be backward in paying your debts. Prompt pay, right away. Never surrender what you consider your rights. Fight for them with all your might. 7 :
=
Though it is charged that “The” Allen and his brother “Wes” waxed wealthy by their shady connection with war bounties, the fact remains that he enlisted and served throughout the Civil War as a lieutenant in
~Lincoln’s second campaign.
his whole checkered career. he told it:
the Twenty-Fifth New York Infantry. He
also contributed fifty thousand dollars to While serving in the war he had what he himself consid- ered the narrowest escape from death of Here is how
7
= *T went into the first battle of the war
and remained in the service until the last
one was fought. Six months after enlisting I was assigned to the secret service. I as- sumed the rdle of a fugitive from the South- ern States and went to Montreal, had a reward of fifty thousand dollars placed on my head, and, to get information for my government, joined the raiders in their at- tacks on St. Albans, Vermont. I was cap- tured there by the United States forces and _
“WICKEDEST MAN IN NEW YORK.”
sentenced to be executed ‘bright, and aie
the next morning.
“Tt was Henry Ward Besther who saved
my life by very prompt action. He was-
billed to speak in St. Albans on the day of © my arrest, and, learning who I was, heat once laid the facts before Secretary Stan- =
ton in a long telegram. The message from
ce
Washington to General Schofield, in com-— :
mand at St. Albans, which gave me my lib- —
erty and life, came just in the nick of time.” Returning from the war, “The”-Allen—
became one of the conspicuous figures in
the under-life of the great city, always re-
membering with jealous tenacity his old = :
preceptor’s advice about fighting for one’s — rights. He then weighed one hundred and
thirty-six pounds, was sinewy,as quick as a
cat, and possessed the courage that
took a scornful delight in facing superior odds. In those days roug’ and-tumble fighting reached the flower of its expression, and ° ‘ma: hem was simply a trifling detail.
“The” Allen’s power in the bi ginning was purely physical, but ; he progressed in wealth and influ-—
foresight which would have been
wholesome levels “of a public ca- reer. He, went into politics, and was interested in several resorts which the police never molested. — “Eddie” Molloy, a big-hearted,
Spring Street. moods, could be as tender and sym- pathetic as a woman. He adopte three children. One of them he picked up from a doorstep; and the boy, now grown to manhood, holds
tution. é So, what was more natural than
“oHE” ALLEN IN THE: Bovis MIX- uP THAT ATTRACTED THE ATTENTION oF A- =
$ GAMBLER AND THEREBY ‘DETERMINED THE NATURE OF HIS — OSS
4.LW ==
the making of a man treading the ~
big-fisted man, was his partner in a gambling-house in Broadway, near Allen, in some of his —
that “The” should pick up a half- _
ence he brought into play a mind singularly subtle and acute, anda ~
a high position in a banking” insti-
: night? e
Rh
was dismissed by the
_ len never
once charged with
wickedness.
“dred
; ministration.
stood against him for
‘William - Travers _ rome.
this point was long and bitter.
THE
Seecved. cat on his way to Molloy’s place one He was feeding it with milk when Molloy came in and took a hand in the kind This is the story Allen told. And-no one could say him either yea or nay, for he and Molloy were alone in the
~house at the time; but when Allen departed,
a short time afterward, the other man was ~ dead, — with _- Allen’s —
--was that his gun had
a bullet-wound in his side,
explanation
fallen from his pocket to the floor and ex- ploded.
He was indicted for murder, and the charge
twenty-two years, but
present District At- rorney of New York,
Je-
After his arrest for Molloy’s murder, Al- “packed a gun,” though he had always done so =p to that time.
But it was not the fact that Allen. was
‘murder, or the other fact that for a year he conducted a dive, that gave him his reputation for extreme His notoriety rested almost solely upon his deter- mination to run pool- rooms in defiance of the law. He believed that if it was wrong to bet on races outside of race-track enclos- ures, it was equally wrong to lay wagers upon the performances of horses at the ringside. law permitted gambling at the tracks, Allen
~ determined that he had an equal right to
gamble away from the tracks.
The fight between Allen and the police on Scores upon ‘scores of times the officers broke down his front doors, only to find two or three hun- white men and negroes jumping through windows or rushing pell-mell from room to room. Allen was never found on the premises, even on occasions when it was
known that he was in the building when the raid began. E cellar by means of which escape was easy,
‘He had a trap-door into the
*
“THE” ALLEN, GAMBLER, WHO GAVE $50,000
TO HELP ELECT LINCOLN LIFE WAS ONCE SAVED BY HENRY WARD BEECHER.
And since the~
right.
Wi
LIVE WIRE.
since a tunnel led from the celler to the- street — = :
Nor did the police, on such occasions, ever find any evidences of gambling. Not a pool- ticket,ea list of horses, or anything suggest-_ ing gambling on race-track performances was lying about. But, in the old-fashioned fireplaces with which the building was fur- nished, it was at length observed that there were always bright fires. And these fires, let it be explained, were not to keep the gamblers from getting cold feet. They were kept blazing to de- stroy, on short notice, evidence that the po- lice might otherwise get in the event of a sudden raid.
Thanks to such acts of thoughtfulness, Al- len was always acquit- ted. Though every- body knew that the places raided were pool-rooms, and_ that Allen owned them, no one could prove it. All the police could tell the judge and the jury was that at a cer- tain place, at a certain time, they found a number of men who had unquestionably been playing the races. But the gamblers them- selves could not tell with whom they had been betting. The wagers were always” placed through a cur- tained window to a~ man secreted in a closed cage. Neither party to the transaction ever saw the other.
Allen and the police kept up this game of hide-and-seek until two years ago, when, broken by the infirmities of age, the veteran gambler retired. He had always said that he would not quit under fire, but he did. And he carried with him a grudge against ~ the rich owners of race-tracks that nothing could soothe. He said they would soon be compelled to cease gambling at the tracks, and made a pretty good guess as to the time their finish would come. Two years ago this yery summer he said he wanted to live two years more, as he then would have sur- vived the era of the bookmaker. He was The bill ae book-making at
AND WHOSE
= &
“THE” ALLEN, “WICKEDEST MAN IN J
.
BREAKING IN THE HEAVY IRON DOORS OF ALLEN’S POOL-ROOM, wai CH WAS RAIDED MORE THAN ~ A HUNDRED a THOUGH THE POLICE WERE ae ABLE TC CON eee Tue PROPRIETOR. roe
&
New. York race-tkacks became a law in: Allen always ae that he - ake “have =
June. Allen died in May, and thus missed avoided much of his trouble with the police ‘the satisfaction of © seeing: the final rout if he ‘had consented to be blackmailed by of his old foes. = =< , 2 them, This, he said, he- would. never do.
cae etek: at one- a his. trials, if = knew a certain officer who had testified against him _-_-the day before, Allen replied: _ “Why, that fellow met me one night at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Clinton ---* Place. He told me that he wanted to get out of town, that he only had fifteen cents, ie would give him fifty dollars he leave. I refused to give him a cent.
~ Policemen Bob Up Everywhere.
ae ~~ *Fust then I. turned around, and there, flat on his stomach at my feet, lay a big eman. The head of another one was : sticking out of a coal-hole, More police- men were watching me in the doorways, and some were peering through the fences -around the corner,’ = eaves however, was never at his best ex- “when he was in a fight. There he ne. Extravagant friends have said that ould lick his weight in wildcats. This is doubtful. But he could fick twice or z _ three times his weight in human flesh. One aa day he boarded a Broadway car near Co- __ lumbus Circle. The car was crowded. Among the many standing was an old Ger- man washerwoman, who was having great difficulty in keeping her feet while trying to retain her hold on a basket of laundry. “The” sized up the situation, and reached the conclusion that a man who was com- _ fortably seated in front of the German ‘woman should give her his seat. This con- clusion he mentioned to the man. The man ~ couldn’t see it that way. “The” couldn’t — see it any other way. Allen grabbed him by the collar. Out shot the man’s good ; right. “The” came back like a bursting fly- Z wheel. A bystander, who regarded Allen : as in the wrong, joined the attack. “The” -. took care of him, too. By the time the car had gone three’ blocks, Allen had whipped both men, and kicked up such a fuss that the German washerwoman, who was the in- — nocent cause of it all, had the whole car to herself.
THE LIVE WIRE.
~ And he never lost his nerve until he died.
Stricken with locomotor ataxia, that dread-
disease that all but paralyzes the legs while leaving the rest of the body unharmed, he
heard the doctor’s sentence of slow death. —
He disputed his physician. He said his grit would bring him through. He offered twenty thousand dollars to any one who would cure him. Offers of “cures” came aplenty. never seen wrote to him. Each one knew how to fix locomotor ataxia. Just do this, or do that, and he would be all right.
But he wasn’t. The disease kept creep- ing. month the stillness that spells death settled deeply and more deeply over his muscles. What he did yesterday he couldn’t do to- day, and what he could do to-day he was morally certain he could not do to-morrow.
Some of his friends began to say their last farewells. Allen told them to do their weeping elsewhere. One young gambler offered to bet “The” a thousand dollars that he would not live six months. Allen snapped up the wager as a dog snaps up a pestiferous fly.
Allen’s Last Phone Call.
And when midnight of the last day speci- fied in the wager came around it was Allen himself who answered the telephone and replied that he was alive. He had to be carried from his bed; his face was like a gray cloud; the hand that held the receiver was like the hand that holds Death’s scythe; but his weak voice still carried its old note of defiance. He had won the thousand dol- lars, he was still above ground, and he would stay atop of the sod until success should crown the efforts of Governor Hughes to outlaw race-track gambling in New York.
He didn’t quite do it. But the first spears of grass had barely pricked through the roof of his grave before a greenish carpet began to spring up in the betting-rings.
DOLLAR BILLS WORTH THEIR WEIGHT IN GOLD.
~“F\OLLAR bills are worth almost their LY’ weight in gold,” a bank president said ‘the other day to a depositor.:
“Yes, I suppose they come in handy for change and are easy to carry,” the Geperis tor replied absently. ;
“No, I was speaking literally,” the Sant president said. “We got into an argument
in the bank here the other day as to how
much a dollar bill Wegheee A twenty-dol-
Men and women whom he had ~
Week after week, and month after —
#
lar gold piece weighs five hundred and forty =
grains. We found that twenty-seven crisp,
- new one-dollar bills weigh the same as a We tested some
twenty-dollar gold piece.
bills that had been in use and found that it |
took but twenty-six of them. to balance the
gold piece. I suppose that twenty-six used
bills gather an accumulation of dirt in pass-
ing from hand to hand that Sone about
what one new bill does,’ ve
-MTRI KORINSKI, the new assistant | engineer, gazed out through the win- -dows of the engine-room into the spacious yard of the Cyclops Steel = Wisi Before him, like a tapering tower, : ee the huge brick smoke-stack, thrusting _ its gray, rolling billows into the clouds. The "chimney stood free in the center of the court, and communicated by an underground duct with the furnace-room. ~ Its shadows fell directly toward Korinski : across the sunny ground, and darkened the window at which he stood. Masons were at _ work repairing or altering the broad base. _ Part of this had been cut away, and jack- screws temporarily supported the immense _— weight. Fees PERL Korinski was sunk in desperate ; thought. In his hand he held a torn envel- ope. Though few suspected it, he was an anarchist, from Novgorod, one whose work in the brotherhood consisted more of thought “than” action. His violent words burned like _ fire in many a pabication devoted to the J=cquses = -- ‘Some fatal warp or kink in his destiny had
turned awry the currents of his human sym-. —
~“ pathies and caused him to embrace the red f chaos. He had become a volcano of
He deemed it ignoble to accept pai o he. Se hhimselt — a8
his writings were winged with bristle.
a - dightnings: and seared like molten lava. STS
he had been twitted by some of his rasher colleagues.
“ All words and no deeds,” they said. “ All mouth and no hands.”
These words had rankled and festered in~ little Korinski’s heart. He resolved that some day he would show them that the man of thought was greater than the man of deeds; that he could act as well as think and write.
Five years ago persecution had driven him to the United States, where he had obtained work as assistant engineer. He had been faithful and industrious in the service of the Cyclops Works, yet for all that he had been discharged. The directors wished to re- duce expenses and he had been given a week’s notice. Mallon, his chief, had been very friendly with him.
“Tl see what I can do to keep you on,” he had said.
Yet here lay the final discharge in his hand—cold, brief, pitiless. Korinski’s heart was like a flaming coal within him; his blood tore like lava through his veins. It was the old story—the rich against the poor, capital against labor, the powerful against the helpless. :
Against the helpless! helpless, then? No! His time for action had come. He would vindicate—nay, glorify — himself in the eyes of his colleagues. a = would see! =
At the thought his small black — eyes. glit- tered like agates, his swarthy cheeks flushed with fire, and his coal-blz ack hair seemed. to strength of many men.
s! the means!
Was he so very
Tn his undersized, illshapen body he sete
He scorned a thods Son the Bae r=
IN THE PATH OF THE AVENGER.
His plans, once perfected, must display some originality, some stroke of his master-genius.
A party of some seven men crossed the yard without. They wore frock coats and silk hats.
“The directors!” muttered Korinski.
They passed between him and the great brick chimney. As they traversed its shadow, a hideous thought leaped into the Russian’s mind. If only the chimney might fall and crush them! If only by pulling upon a lever, or pressing upon a button, he might cause that lofty pillar of brick to topple over on these enemies of mankind!
They were going to the company’s offices, these elegant men of wealth, these gentle- men who had discharged him. Gentlemen! Unto whom were they gentle? Unto them- selves? To their women-folk? Surely not to him. They laughed and jested. ‘Their well-fed bodies, contented faces, and fine clothes were the very epecuee of all that fell to him.
In a few days he would again be a weary, homeless wanderer in search of work. These men were to blame for that. They were going to the monthly meeting in the - small building to the right of the engine- house. The eyes of the Russian followed them with a baleful malignancy and he clenched his hands.
“They fear nothing but force,” he mut- tered to himself. ‘‘ They are armored with gold against the law, but force they fear.”
At noon Korinski wandered, aimlessly about the sunny yard. Then passed by the foot of the tall chimney. About half of the base was cut away, but the enormous weight of the overhang ‘was sustained by powerful steel jack-screws set some distance apart. The chimney stood like some tree into which the ax had cut half-way.
Steel cables lay along the ground, halif- buried beneath broken brick, earth, and mor- tar. They had been used for bracing the chimney before the screws were put in place.
All this Korinski observed mechanically. His mind was brooding darkly upon his wrongs and his revenge.
Passing by the rear of the building where the directors were assembled, he glanced up at the wirdows of the committee-room. High above the roof he saw the mighty shaft of the chimney soaring into the air. Its shadow had moved far since that morning and now fell across the low building before him. The stack, the offices, and the engine-room formed the points of an equilateral triangle,
Korinski seemed. seized with a sudden in- spiration. A satanic smile spread. over hi dark visage, an evil joy shone in his eyes. He strode back into the yard, and with de- Ebenate steps he measured off the distance
_ smoke.
-me on!
53
between the offices and the base of the chim- ney.
“One hundred and ninety-seven feet,” he said in a whisper. ‘““How high is the stack?” he inquired casually of a mason, eating his lunch in the shade.
“She was two hundred and thirty feet when we built her five years ago,” answered the man, “and I’m not thinking she’s shrunk any since. She’s the highest in the whole State. We that built her call her ~ Big Moll.” =
“TI call it Moloch—a monster!” burst — forth the Russian passionately. “You — we are the slaves they fling and feed to it. We are the fuel—fools that—”
The man stared. Korinski checked ges self and resumed in.a milder tone:
“Two hundred and thirty feet, Its a very high stack. Thetallest Iyever saw be- fore was at Odessa. That wis only sixty — meters. Those screws look rather light— for all’ that weight,” he added, pointing to the two jacks. “ What if they should give way?”
E Oh, they’re chilled steel,” replied the mason, “and they’ Il carry a thousand ten to the square inch.”
“But if they should give way?” Korinski.
“Well, if this one, to the right. here; broke, over Big Moll would go right onto that little building yonder. If-that one to the left broke the engine-house would be smashed flatter’n sheet iron.’
The man spoke the truth, as Korinski knew, when he had studied €very detail of the con- struction and the method of support. That night he was to be on duty alone in the engine-room. That night, likewise, an ex- tra meeting was to be held by the directors —no doubt to discharge other employees or to cut down, in their remorseless-way, the wretched wages they were paying the men. .~
But now he held them in his hands. Their lives and their destinies were subject unto him. A sense of majestic power possessed him. His little frame seemed to expand with the thought of his sito his vindication, and his revenge.
That afternoon Korinski was off duty. He climbed a neighboring hill from which he could see the various buildings of the steel works spread out below him. Only the shaft of the great stack rose higher than the hill, pouring forth its dense volumes of They rolled away across the blue heavens and wove long” drifting shadows over the landscape.
“It’s a cloud of smoke by day,” murmured the anarchist, “a pillar of fire by-night to lead It is the monument of my revenge. Who of all the brotherhood will ever have
:
yr
asked
2 : =
eer struck a blow like this? The dolts must ee learn that brains and not bombs and blud- geons count in our noble work!” -— He shook his fist toward the pretty lit- tle building where the directors met. He _ saw the roof of his own comfortable engine- room, and recalled that in a few days it would. shelter him no more. Well, much might” happen in a week, in a day, in an = hots! ee That evening at six he must be at his post _ again. Mallon, the chief engineer, had his night off. 2 All the afternoon he sat on the grass-cov- ered. ‘hill, his legs doubled under his chin, his eyes fixed | upon the buildings below. ‘There he crouched like some deformed gar- — goyle or like an eagle euztcising his prey from some mountain scarp. E= Evening came, and then the early autumn Erect ok ‘night. He saw the doors of the monster iS furnaces: open and shut while sudden bursts _ of ruddy splendor were flung across the open spaces. The windows of the buildings - glowed at times like crimson coals, then sank into instant night, leaving vague blots => floating before his eyes. The steam from : the exhaust-pipes ascended in beautiful E snowy forms like huge white flowers bloom- oe ing in the night. ee He saw the workers—contented slaves— “come and go—dark shapes flitting hither and thither. Stalwart men they were, yet to him with his knowledge, but feeble babes. ; The great steel works with their muffled ; hum and roar and clangor, lifted up a stir- ring hymn of incessant toil to the brooding heavens. To what end was all that toil? Here, as elsewhere, cannons were being cast and armor forged for battle-ships, machines of murder to wreak havoc among innocent men at the behest of their rulers. He raised his eyes. The tapering mass of the chimney stood out, a softened shadow, - against the nightly blue. A large star glit- tered like a gem directly above it. “Tt is a good omen,” said Korinski. ‘The smoke, as it poured rapidly away into the farther darkness toward the hills, ow and again blotted out the star, but always it emerged again, pure and bril- liant.. It returned to Korinski’s eyes like the symbol of a resolve that must not flag. Now a burst of flame issued from a steel flue over the buildings that contained the blast furnaces. Grandly it flickered upward like some enormous torch t until the red brick ‘of the smoke-stack glowed in the bath of crimson light, like a shaft of red-hot iron 5 “soaring into the startled night. The smoke from its wide throat took on a tinge of crimson-orange in exquisite contrast to the deep-blue firmament, :
=
THE LIVE WIRE. aS
The soul of the Slav was not insensible to” the grandeur of the scene. For a time he seemed plunged i in dreams, perhaps in doubt, then—
“That is my pillar of fire by night,” he murmured.
A church-bell from the adjacent village struck. It was a quarter before six.
Korinski slowly descended the hill. Once more he passed by the base of the stupen- dous stack. The masons had left it some time before; the yard was deserted. :
He walked quickly to the opening in the base. The two steel jack-screws stood plain- ly forth. Seizing the heavy hook that was fixed to the end of one of the steel cables, he placed it about the neck of the screw to the right. It hung there loosely and inse- curely, and Korinski propped a loop of the cable between two bricks, in order to support the hook. The cable extended to within thirty feet of the engine-room, and its end terminated in another hook.
The misshapen figure disappeared into the brightly lighted engine-room. A few minutes later a tall man came forth. - It was Mallon, the chief engineer, bound for home.
Korinski sat in his chair beneath an elec- tric lamp, his eyes upon the gleaming ma- chinery, silent and resistless in its working. The ponderous fly-wheels whirled in their circles; the great piston and connecting-rods reached out like mighty arms, and then drew back along their noiseless guides. Close by the door stood an auxiliary engine, used for dragging heavy castings or machinery about the yard or for hoisting purposes. A coil of steel rope was wound around a drum connected with it.
It was now half past six. At seven little Fanny Hillers, the nine-year-old daughter of his landlady, would bring Korinski his supper. All the affection’ that unrequited love, suffering, persecution, and ingratitude had not driven out of the heart of the ill- favored Russian refugee had gone forth in a fatherly tenderness to little Fanny.
Such a child, he often thought, might once have been his—if only Natalia—but no, his love had now been consecrated to the great cause, the catise that was mother, wife, and - daughter to him. But his comrades were his brothers, and they were right. Deeds, deeds, deeds must be their children. To-night his brain should bring a child into the world, a child whose birth-cry should make all man- kind thrill—some with terror and some with joy. :
The hands of the ince crept lows on
oS seyen. Almost on the stroke of the our little Fanny Hillers appeared with her | basket.
“Were is your supper, Korie,” ‘she said. |
ii
A PARTY OF SOME SEVEN MEN CROSSED THE YARD WITHOUT. THEY WORE FROCK COATS AND SILK HATS. “THE DIRECTORS,” MUTTERED KORINSKI.
“T told mama you liked those apple-tarts
so much. See, I brought you—one—two—
three of them, and they are nice and warm, _ Korrie.”
Korrie was her childish version of Korin- ski, When it fell from her lips the name - * seemed full of an infinite sweetness to him.
; “You're a dear little girl, Fanny,” he said with a smile. “ You're a darling.”
He placed his hand on her head, stroking the curls that welled forth from beneath her bonnet. Even so, he mused, Natalia’s child mtust be—Natalia, the playmate of his in- fancy, she who was married in distant Lo- ginova long ago. Perhaps she was dead
— now; perhaps she had forgotten him, but he Fe ~=he had not forgoften!
he girl had set his supper on a wooden — ‘bench, and stood ready to depart with her
basket. : “Good night, Korrié: =~ home so late to-night.” _. stone step that led to the yard. es Fanny,” called Korinski; a ‘Fanny, come — : ; Fi :
You mustn't come
Her foot was on the eS disturbed some arrangement of this steel
The girl turned and approached him, He —
placed his arm about her, and lowered
his swarthy features toward the pure, rose-
leaf face of the little maid. His eyes looked into her own with a profound, compelling pathos. His voice shook. “Will Fanny give Korrie a kiss?” “Course I will,” said Fanny, and kissed — him on the cheek.
“Thank you, Fanny,” said the anarchist. = His’ eyes, dimmed with a _ mist, saw her bright face vanish through the
“Good night.”
door.
Fanny ran lightly across the yard, passing by the base of the big chimney, as she had done when she came. Something caught her foot; she