Son of Power

E-text prepared by Al Haines
WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT and ZAMIN KI DOST
Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1920 Copyright, 1920, by Doubleday, Page & Company All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian Copyright, 1919, by the Curtis Publishing Company
Zamin Ki Dost is a title given to one who lived in India many years—from the time when she was little more than a child. The tale of tales would be her own story. Her name is
I THE GOOD GREY NERVE II SON OF POWER III SON OF POWER ( Continued ) IV THE MONKEY GLEN V THE MONKEY GLEN ( Continued ) VI JUNGLE LAUGHTER VII THE HUNTING CHEETAH VIII THE MONSTER KABULI IX THE MONSTER KABULI ( Continued ) X HAND-OF-A-GOD XI ELEPHANT CONCERNS XII BLUE BEAST XIII NEELA DEO, KING OF ALL ELEPHANTS XIV NEELA DEO, KING OF ALL ELEPHANTS ( Continued ) XV THE LAIR XVI FEVER BIRDS
The Good Grey Nerve
His name was Sanford Hantee, but you will hear that only occasionally, for the boys of the back streets called him Skag, which got him somewhere at once. That was in Chicago. He was eleven years old, when he wandered quite alone to Lincoln Park Zoo, and the madness took him.
A silent madness. It flooded over him like a river. If any one had noticed, it would have appeared that Skag's eyes changed. Always he quite contained himself, but his lips stirred to speech even less after that. He didn't pretend to go to school the next day; in fact, the spell wasn't broken until nearly a week afterward, when the keeper of the Monkey House pointed Skag out to a policeman, saying the boy had been on the grounds the full seven open hours for four straight days that he knew of.
Skag wasn't a liar. He had never skipped school before, but the Zoo had him utterly. He was powerless against himself. Some bigger force, represented by a truant officer, was necessary to keep him away from those cages. His father got down to business and gave him a beating—much against that good man's heart. (Skag's father was a Northern European who kept a fruit-store down on Waspen street—a mildly-flavoured man and rotund. His mother was a Mediterranean woman, who loved and clung.)