“See that four funnelled steamship hanging up there in the sky upside down?” he said. “And then off there on the starboard bow of the steamer don’t you see a five masted schooner with all sails set and her booms to port?”

“Oh, yes, Cap’n Duke,” cried the children. “And there is still more.”

“What do you see, Johnny?” asked the captain.

“Why, there is a battleship and a ferryboat, and over on the right I see the Statue of Liberty.”

Cap’n Duke took off his specks, rubbed them with his red handkerchief and looked hard.

“To be sure, to be sure,” he said. “And astern of the battleship there is a torpedo boat, and after that comes a school of whales and a yacht race. Never see the likes of that even in the Desert of Sahara.”

In half an hour it was all over and the children went home for dinner. It was noised about Far Rockaway last night that really there was a beautiful mirage to be seen at sunset, and there was not a soul in the place who refused to believe it. Cap’n Duke and the children had seen it and that was enough.

STORY OF SAILOR

San Francisco Examiner

If you had done nothing worse than going to sleep in an out-of-the-way place on a bay steamer and awakening to find yourself in State’s prison with a fifteen-year sentence hanging over your head, how would you feel?

John Larsen had such an experience last Friday. He was, and may yet be, a deckhand on the schooner Mary. He imbibed a quantity of refreshment on the water front and then hid away in the steamer Caroline for a quiet nap. He didn’t know that the Caroline was about to go over to San Quentin with a load of supplies for the prison. The first thing he did know was that a husky guard with a big gun was prodding him into wakefulness and saying hard things. Captain Smith of the Caroline was standing near.

“Yes, it’s that fifteen-year man, all right,” the guard said, as he gave Larsen a stiff jolt under the ribs.

The sleepy sailor was yanked out into daylight and taken ashore, where he saw only prison walls and men in stripes all about him. He was marched to the office of the captain of the guard, the man beside him meanwhile commenting on the fine disguise Larsen wore. The poor sailor was dumb from fright, and could not make an intelligible protest. But when the officials looked him over, they laughed and told the guard to throw him out. He was not the man.

“Ay scart lak djefoul ven woke oop in yale,” said Larsen yesterday after he had got back from San Quentin by ferry. “Ay ban sleep on bale yute in Caroline ven gun stick me in ribs an’ ay see mens vid stripes all aroond, an’ man vid gun say ay ban fifteen-year faller. You bat heart went in boots and ay ban sick. Ven man stick gun in ribs an’ say ‘Git!’ You bat ay coom quick avay. No more sleep in Caroline on bale yute, you bat!”

A STOWAWAY

Boston Journal

Abraham Grabau wanted to get into the United States mighty badly.

He was poor and had never had a chance. But he had read a lot about America and thought how fine it would be to come here and retrieve himself and really do something worth while before it was too late.

So at Port Said he hid away on board the steamship St. Patrick, which was bound for Boston from Yokohama.

Of course he knew it wasn’t right to become a stowaway, but he couldn’t see what real harm there was in it. Besides, he hadn’t any money and it seemed to be the only thing that was left. And he never dreamed that the great free country beyond the seas often keeps worthy men outside its borders just because they haven’t the price of a ticket.

But he learned many things that worried him from the St. Patrick’s crew during the passage, after he had made himself known, when he couldn’t starve any longer, and had been put to work.

He was told that an alien stowaway has a mighty poor show of “getting by” with Uncle Sam—that, in fact, he hadn’t a chance on earth of being landed here. It nearly broke his heart, for there seemed to be no way out. But he finally found one—and why not? It was as good a way as any other. And, besides, he might win.

While the St. Patrick lay at anchor off quarantine Thursday night, Abraham slipped off his shoes and stole on deck noiselessly. He placed his shoes on deck alongside the railing and pulled down a life-buoy.

He gave a last look toward the lights that were twinkling on shore and dropped into the water.

Next morning the shoes were found near where the life-buoy should have been.

Of course the ship was searched, but Abraham was missing. Immigration officials at Long Wharf and the harbor police were notified of the escape. But there was no trace of the stowaway.

Yesterday the Hebrew’s daring act was talked of admiringly in many quarters, and the hope was expressed that he had won. There is a slight chance that he was picked up and carried to safety. But those best informed declare that the little Hebrew has beyond a doubt reached the Port of Missing Men, where entry is never refused, even to the friendless and the hopeless and the forlorn.

SEARCH FOR LOST TREASURES

New York Sun

In the gray hours before the dawn this morning, when all Ulmer Park sleeps and nothing is heard along the reaches of Marine Basin but the crowing of the restless cocks, will slip from her moorings a low, rakish craft. With hawseholes muffled and silence cloths on port and starboard anchor, hatches muzzled and even the kick of her propeller smothered by a blanket, this phantom will speed past the clam factories and chowder distilleries out to the bounding main.

Hush! ’Tis the Mayflower, onetime defender of the America’s cup, bearing her daring crew of gentleman adventurers down to the isles of spice and the bloodied seas where Morgan trod piratical quarterdecks and Teach snicked off the heads of treasure bearers. Skipper Scull is at the helm, Buck Harrison in the galley; four more, good men and true, stand in the port chains and shade their eyes as they scan the waters of Gravesend Bay for the police boat.

Romance lies behind the horizon and the glint of the rising sun has the glint of Sir Henry’s gold. For, mark ye well, Skipper Scull has wrapped in tarpaulin, next to his open front undershirt, a chart. Red and blue is the chart; it marks a reef in the Caribbean; it limns in the sea the boundaries of a precious spot; it tells where lies the English corvette, Good Faith, out of Santo Domingo City in 1684 with five millions in plate and minted doubloons in her strong boxes.

But who are these men, tried and found trusty, who sail with Skipper Scull on the converted yacht Mayflower out of Marine Basin this morning? Skipper Scull, Harvard, ’98, a venturesome soul who lived in Tokio many, many months, and who, wishing to be a war correspondent, finally was allowed to get as near as forty-five miles from the scene of a battle. Then there are Gordon Brown, Yale, ’01, who was captain of the football team that laid Harvard so low in 1900, Stephen Noyes, Harvard, ’03, H. L. Corbett, Harvard, ’03, Buck Harrison, Harvard, ’04, fullback, whose name was a terror to all opponents, and Roger Darby, Harvard, ’05, a tower of strength on the Crimson line in his time.

Consider this, that Matsukata, whose father is a Baron in Japan and holds fief over hundreds of samurai, was offered a place in the intrepid crew—as cook. Matsukata yearned for adventure, but he could not so demean himself, and that is why Buck Harrison of the line holds his place in the galley when the Mayflower slips out of the Basin this morning.

With the Mayflower steaming out of Gravesend Bay, nose to the south, there must come a hiatus in this tale, and the curtain of the past must be lifted, revealing dark and bloody scenes.

CURTAIN

It is a fair day in June, Anno Domini 1684, and the tropical palms that fringe the beach about Santo Domingo Bay are nodding in the breeze. [Santo Domingo Bay is used as a disguise of the real port, which it wouldn’t do to reveal.] All is astir about the wharf, for the good English corvette, Good Faith, is sailing this day for Plymouth, laden fair to the gunwales with plate of price, spoils of cathedrals in Mexico and hard minted gold in doubloons—and oh, yes, pieces of eight!—that is, the ransom of cities in Salvador and the Guineas. Spanish gold it is, torn from the grasp of bleeding men.

A cheer, a roundelay as the anchor comes up, and with sails bellying and the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew whipping from the gaff, the Good Faith ploughs her way past the reef and out to sea.

But wait! From around the bluff beyond the sea gate, which is hidden from the Good Faith by the rocky headland, come stealing two long feluccas. The brass of cannon glints from bow and taffrail; sails strain with the wind; the gorgeous banner of Spain streams from the mainsail peak.

The watchers on the headlands of Santo Domingo City drop on their knees in prayer at the sight, for are not those two feluccas the sea vultures of Don Sebastian Fernando Hacienda y Juan Fernandez, plunderer of towns and pillager of altars?

At gaze stand the citizens of Santo Domingo City as they watch the feluccas steal into the track of the Good Faith. Tortured with anxiety are these good folk when they behold the Good Faith swing about the headland and come into view of the dastard Spaniards. Now the Good Faith is aware of her peril. See her crowd the canvas on! See her leap to the tug of the wind and race for her life down, down the watery way to the horizon! The feluccas follow fast; they gain yard by yard; still they gain and yet still.

The horizon rises and swallows up the Good Faith and the Don’s feluccas, mere dots on the horizon.

Alack, never again did man set eyes on the Good Faith. Plymouth awaited her in vain; Santo Domingo City sent out sloops and men-o’-war to search for her. Never again did Don Sebastian ravage the coasts of Salvador and plunder the galleons of the Main. Men forgot that there had ever been a Good Faith or a Don Sebastian.

* * * * *

[Stars here indicate hiatus of 220 years.]

A fisher of sponges, an American fisher of sponges, in sooth, is sailing his craft about the Caribbean in search of his prey. It is some years later. It is only a few years ago in fact. A storm comes roaring out of the Gulf, and the fisher of sponges with his native fishermen is driven in his cockleshell far, far out of his course. In the dead of night and the murk of the storm the boat is piled up on a reef and they rub elbows with death until the ruddy streaks of dawn come.

Then this fisher of sponges, this American fisher of sponges—he was also a diver and he helped raise the Merrimac in Santiago harbor once—looked over the side of his boat and he saw down about fifteen feet in the blue water the prow of a ship. Straightway he dived. He came up with pieces of eight sticking through the cracks of both fists, or maybe it was doubloons.

Forthwith all of his native fishermen dived, and they came up with silver and golden coin representing maybe $1,221.34 American, who knows?

They dived again and brought up the ship’s bell. About the rust eaten rim was graven this motto:

“Good Faith yclept Dom. 1680 Plymouth. Ringeth this Belle God’s hours and telleyeth man’s life Space.”

Straightway did this American fisher of sponges get him his sextant and his latitude. He had to guess at the longitude. Then with the ship’s bell and the pieces of eight he sailed to Jamaica.

There he found one who was interested in his tale. Together they went to a lawyer, and he recommended them to another lawyer, whose name is Reginald R. Leaycraft and whose office is at 129 Pearl street, this city. Many old records in Santo Domingo City and in England were gone over, so say this fisher of sponges and his lawyer, and at last the shipping register of the original Good Faith was discovered. Then they knew of her fatal journey out of Santo Domingo City on that June afternoon so long ago, and knew, so say both, of the treasure that was in her bottom.

Skipper Scull, and he alone, knows how it was that the sponge diver happened to meet such an adventurous spirit as himself here in New York. Yet, hark ye, within a month after the sponge fisher and Skipper Scull had met fortuitously, all of those other brave gentlemen and true from Harvard and Yale had met to form a solemn bond and compact.

This was the bond and compact: That the organization should be made under the auspices of the Southern Research Company, a duly registered organization; that the sponge fisher and his lawyer should have share and share alike with the others; that the sponge fisher should be one of the party of discovery, in that he knew best how to interpret the chart that he had made that blue morning after the storm; and that, chief of all, Matsukata, the man whose father is a baron in Japan, should be cook.

All of these conditions, save the last, so recalcitrant did Matsukata prove, were fulfilled to the letter. Then went the representatives of the company to Mrs. Eva M. Barker, the owner of the old cup defender, Mayflower. Five years ago the old defender had been converted into a sloop with auxiliary power. The Mayflower was brought around to the Marine Basin and all sorts of strange stores in boxes and crates were lowered into her hold. Diving suits flopped upon her decks and grappling hooks shoved their prongs through burlap sacking.

Skipper Scull was there on the deck of the Mayflower each day to shoo away the curious and to scowl at the prying. Not a word would the war correspondent skipper say to the most veiled interrogations. Until the Mayflower slipped past the chowder distilleries in this morning’s early light the mystery of her mission and her bourne remained inviolate.

But Skipper Scull, Buck Harrison and the rest have overreached themselves in their secretiveness. For know that over a long glass clinking with ice one sleepy night up at the Harvard Club on Forty-fourth street one of the sextette of adventurers revealed the scheme of the expedition. That is why not even Skipper Scull knows what fell plot is now a-brewing to rob him of his putative treasure.

This is the plot: Up in Boston lives Alexander Forbes, the grandson of John Murray Forbes. He is the possessor of the yacht Merlin. To his ears came the tale of the treasure hunt. Not long did the grass grow under the Forbes foot. He called together the following men, known to be desperate pirates: Jim Field, Harvard, ’03; Donald Gregg, Harvard, ’02; Ralph Page, Harvard, ’03; Buz Baird, Harvard, ’04, and W. Davis Conrad, also of Harvard. To them he broached his counter plot, and all gleefully agreed, if they did not sign a pact with their life blood.

So it will be—and one of these Boston pirates said yesterday that it cannot but be—that after the Mayflower has gone to her all but secret destination in the Caribbean and is sailing homeward, either laden with gold or with experience, the yacht Merlin will one day stalk out of the horizon and confront her. The Jolly Roger will fly from the peak of the Merlin and a six pounder will cough out demand for the Mayflower’s surrender. The Mayflower will have to heave to and be robbed or go to the bottom with all of her gallant gentlemen adventurers weltering in their own blood.

It will be about three weeks hence, so swore this Boston pirate by book and ring yesterday, that the Merlin will sail on her fell mission. After that the Spanish Main will roar again and bloody death will be abroad over the mellifluous waters of the Gulf stream.

RELIEF SHIP

New York Evening Post

Capt. Pickels—“Pickels of the schooner Cluett,” as they called him on the Labrador coast—standing on the deck of that stanch little vessel, which will soon be bucking ice in Baffin Bay, is not the figure of an Arctic explorer. To the mildly interested visitor to the East River dock, where his ship was moored, there was nothing about the square-set skipper in shirt sleeves and straw hat, watching supplies come aboard, to suggest that he is the man selected to command the relief expedition which will search for Donald B. MacMillan, starting to-day. MacMillan set out from New York just two years ago to find mythical Crocker Land, and now the American Museum of Natural History, one of the chief backers of his expedition, is sending Pickels to find MacMillan.

Both the captain in summer city garb and his little schooner, dwarfed by the overhanging pier, and not so different to the unpracticed eye from hundreds of sailing craft loading here, refused at first to fit into the picture which he painted in simple language of the months ahead. Within a few weeks the Cluett will be feeling out open reaches in the ice which is rarely absent after Nachvak Bay, on the north Labrador coast, is passed, laying a course almost due north up Davis Strait. Thence to Melville Bay, near Etah, the MacMillan expedition’s base, it will be nip and tuck between the Cluett and rapidly descending winter. She will be late, and, skirting the ever-present “middle ice” of Baffin Bay, on a course not far off shore, she will be lucky to reach her objective before the waters close entirely.

And luckier still if she finds MacMillan and his party waiting. For then there is the chance that, with more good fortune and able seamanship, Capt. Pickels may be able to bring all hands out through the thin crust which by September will cover all those waters. In that event he will have made a season’s record to be very proud of. What is far more likely—and that is the reason for the two years’ supply of foodstuffs on board the Cluett—the schooner will nose her way into Melville Bay with hardly enough time in which to select a winter berth in the ice. If MacMillan has to be waited for or search made for him, the long winter will make either task easy. The diminutive, unpretentious wooden sailing ship which now reeks of oil and ship stores under the warm sun, will then find herself encompassed with leagues of ice. Eskimo ice huts will spring up around her like mushrooms, and in the long Arctic night it would be difficult to identify the little Cluett with the picture at the foot of East 21st Street.

But closer acquaintance with Pickels and the Cluett helps one’s imagination to bridge the gap. Ever since she was built at Tottenville, some four years ago, for the Grenfell Mission service on the Labrador coast, Pickels has commanded her. She was designed for work in northern waters. As the bronze plate in the captain’s cabin sets forth, she was presented to Dr. Wilfred Grenfell in July, 1911, by George B. Cluett, of Troy, N. Y. That she went to sea with purposes other than those of the ordinary trading schooner, the plate makes plain in these few words: “The Sea is His and He made It.” The inscription in the brass band which binds the wheel, “Jesus saith I will make you fishers of men,” serves to distinguish her from the run of fishing craft which infest the Labrador waters. But for these symbols of a higher vocation she is just like them, save that she is much more stanch.

From stem to stern the Cluett measures 142 feet, and her beam is 26 feet. Every foot of timber in her is white oak. And back of the thin steel plate on her bows, where the impact of ice is concentrated, she can boast about two feet of solid timber. The outer shell forward is composed of white oak timbers eight inches thick. Behind them is nearly a foot of timbering, and then an inner shell of six-inch white oak all stiffened with drift bolts. The Cluett can be counted on to stand up to the force of her eighty horse-power kerosene engines, against all but solid ice. And she has proved it more than once.

That brought the captain to the recital of an achievement which probably had much to do with the selection by the Museum authorities of him and his ship for the work in hand. Making ordinarily about three trips a year as supply ship to the chain of missions established by the Grenfell Association, it was no new thing for the Cluett to show her seaworthiness in ice and dirty weather. But last summer she did something out of the common. Chartered for a few months by the Carnegie Institution for magnetic investigations in Hudson’s Bay, she and Capt. Pickets displayed remarkable facility for edging into ice-strewn waters and slipping out with promptness.

In a month’s time she made the circuit of Hudson’s Bay, undeterred by almost constant snow-storms and gales, frequently traversing untried waterways. She escaped without misadventure, where a less careful pilot might have lost his ship. Once the two principal members of the party, the observers, were swamped in a small boat. Losing instruments and all their equipment they went five days without food or fire, and owed their lives to Capt. Pickels’s prompt appearance with relief. Getting into Hudson’s Bay in mid-summer of last year was not easy on account of the ice. After cleanly threading Hudson Strait, the Cluett encountered a Canadian icebreaker, smashed by the very element she was designed to combat, and breaking up. As this point was a long way south of his present destination, Capt. Pickels is mindful of what may be in store for him this summer. But he regards the MacMillan relief expedition with as much serenity as if it were one of his regular northern visits, and with as little timidity as might be expected from a mariner who has navigated every ocean and circumvented ice in Bering Sea as successfully as in Grenfell’s Tickle.

Although the proved nimbleness of the Cluett leads her charterers to hope that she may slip into Melville Bay and out with the rescued MacMillan party in time to get back to New York in November, the way food supplies have been poured into her show that no chances are to be taken, in a locality where, as the captain remarked, “ye can’t fetch stuff from a grocery ’round the corner.’” He shed light upon what for a dozen men might be considered a two years’ food supply. Some two thousand pounds of beef, nearly half of it canned and the rest pickled in brine, and an almost equal quantity of mutton and pork, formed the backbone of the stores. Beans and potatoes and barrel on barrel of pilot bread set off this impressive meat supply, which winter hunting is to vary with fresh steaks and roasts.

Several hundred pounds of coffee and a hundred of tea, onions and many gallons of lime juice to ward off scurvy, were important items; strangely enough, not a particle of chocolate or cocoa. A comment upon the rather small supply of milk—condensed, of course—as compared with, for one thing, three hundred pounds of rolled oats, drew from the hardy captain the explanation that crews in the North preferred molasses with their oatmeal, and of molasses he had nearly a hundred gallons.

Perhaps these assurances of creature comfort have had their attractions. At any rate, Capt. Pickels has been pestered with would-be passengers who want to make the trip with him or put in a winter of hunting on Melville Bay. And they were not all men. One young person from Vassar sent a request. But Capt. Pickels will have none of them. So that, when he starts on the last leg of his journey north, with decks piled high with barrels of kerosene—the Cluett is to be stocked with nearly five thousand gallons of kerosene and 900 gallons of gasolene for her engines—the only person aboard beside his crew of eight hardy Nova Scotians, will be the representative of the Natural History Museum. Capt. Pickels’s Newfoundland dog “Chum” completes the list.

SQUIRREL

New York World

Somebody let a squirrel loose in City Hall Park yesterday, or more likely Saturday night, and as a result that part of the green grass plot just north of the Nathan Hale statue was the only busy section in the business district from 2 until 3 o’clock on the Sabbath. If there was one cat there were thirty. Of all sizes and conditions they ranged, hailing from Cherry Hill and other points. Toms, tabbies and kittens were all there, and in circles they sat about a big tree on which a gilt sign read “Ulmus Americanus.”

Above, perched in the branches, was Mr. Squirrel. Intently he looked down at the cats and the crowd of park loungers and others leaning on the fence and flicked his gray tail saucily at the feline delegation. One venturesome Tom scooted up the tree, but when he began to crawl out on the branch on which “Brer” Squirrel sat the latter lightly jumped to an adjoining tree, not labelled, and chattered back at Tomcatus Cherryhillibus.

The other cats with uplifted eyes watched the flight of the squirrel and camped under the second tree, while the crowd of human onlookers increased. The siege was getting interesting.

“I wonder will the cats get him, Jimmie,” said one young woman, but the squirrel only kept on scolding to himself.

Not long after a young man in a gray suit stepped over the fence and stood beneath the tree. He carried a small bag over one shoulder. The moment the squirrel saw him he ran down the tree and perched on the man’s other shoulder. When the man opened the bag he popped in, and they started off for a Jersey ferry.

The disgusted cats dispersed and the crowd melted away.

POLICEMEN’S PET

Philadelphia Telegraph

Just as the “joker” tapped 12 o’clock today in the Trenton avenue and Dauphin street police station, a file of unhelmeted patrolmen marched silently into the back yard and reverently placed the remains of “Benny” in his last long resting place.

For a moment they stood sad-eyed, while Bill Tufts, the old turnkey, softly dropped the earth upon the coffin, and then, when only a memory marked the spot near the patrol house where “Benny” slept, they went back to the roll-room and discussed in whispers the unexpected death.

“Benny” died at 11.20 o’clock, despite the efforts of House Sergeant Site, who immersed him in fresh water and tried in every way to restore the fast-ebbing life. But a broken heart could not thus be appeased, for “Benny’s” heart had undoubtedly been broken when a younger rival for the affections of the bluecoats turned up in the station house not long ago.

Old age might also have contributed toward the death, for “Benny” was 7½ years old, and his species never exist longer than seven years, according to Street Sergeant Murdock, who is well posted on the subject. “Benny” holds the record for age around the station house. There have been others of his ilk there constantly for fifteen years, but “Benny” was the longest liver of the entire crowd.

“Benny” was a fan-tailed goldfish.

ZOO STORY

New York World

This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I.

—Hippopotamus Pete.

“He’s a pig-headed brute,” say the keepers in the Bronx Zoo after they have been up all night watching Pete, who weighs 1,300 pounds—more than four Tafts.

“He’s a wise old guy,” say the keepers admiringly after they have slept and are wondering at Pete’s sagacity.

Director Hornaday, of the Zoo, and the keepers fondly hope to remove Pete to-day from his old cage in the antelope house to his apartment in the new and splendid elephant house. But whether Pete goes or stays in the antelope house depends upon how hungry he was last night.

The World has told of the futile efforts to move this Gibraltar of hippopotamus flesh. As a last resort, Director Hornaday has been starving Pete for two days and nights. When Pete is hungry he is very hungry, indeed. He eats a wagon load of provender a day, shovelling in the food as stokers shovel coal into a steamship’s furnace.

Taking advantage of this, Director Hornaday had placed in Pete’s cage a “moving case,” a very strong box big enough to hold Pete. At one end of the box is a drop door rigged to a fall and tackle. At the closed end of the big box the keepers placed a tempting meal of all the things Pete likes best.

It was all very simple. Two keepers watched Pete every hour of the twenty-four. Pete, hungry, was to walk into the box after the food, the keepers were to let the drop door fall and—there you are, or, rather, there Pete was.

The simple plan did not work out well. By day Pete seemed to have lost all appetite. But by Saturday night he had thought out a plan in his turn. While the sleepy keepers watched, Pete entered the box, but he carefully stretched back his hind legs so that they remained outside it. The keepers dropped the door; it fell on Pete’s hind quarters.

Pete backed out, scooping the food along with his fore legs. Once outside he had a hearty meal, which he seemed to enjoy exceedingly.

They built a much longer moving case yesterday and put food at its closed end. A hippopotamus is not built like a dachshund. To get that food Pete must include his whole bulk in the box.

CAT

Chicago Inter Ocean

Tom Stroller is dead.

Tom Stroller was only a cat, and he was old and ugly and never even had been allowed within the sacred precincts of a cat show, so, perhaps, it doesn’t matter much.

And yet there were a hundred girls, students at the Art Institute, who looked wistfully at the desk of the Klio Club when they went to their lunch. And there were 100 others who didn’t smile as they sat about the tables. One or two attempted a eulogy, but the efforts were not inspiring, for the best that could be said of old Tom Stroller was that “he was such a friendly cat.”

Time was when Tom was young and useful. Those were the days—twelve years ago—when there was a stern work to be done at the Klio Club, then at South Michigan Avenue and East Monroe Street. Those were the days when Tom stepped proudly through serried ranks of rodent dead, the days when he was tolerated because he was useful, and was forgiven his ugliness because he was so friendly. Those were the days when Tom achieved his first love—the love of Mrs. Bush, mother of the club.

Side by side Tom and Mrs. Bush grew old together. When the girls at the institute moved their club to 26 South Wabash Avenue, Tom, now toothless, and Mrs. Bush, now almost at the end of the road, were established together at the cashier’s desk.

New students came to look amused and remained to love them both. Old students came back to Chicago to rush up to the Klio Club and cry: “Why, if there aren’t Tom and Mother Bush. God bless you both!”

But one day last year Mrs. Bush was stricken with an illness that soon may prove fatal. She was taken to the Mary Thompson Hospital and a new cashier came to the club’s desk. She was kind to Tom and stroked his grizzled fur, but things were different now, and Tom began to grow old very fast. He died yesterday morning.

DOG

Chicago Herald

Colonel is only a dog, but he is believed to be dying because he did his duty.

Colonel is a dignified St. Bernard, with a fine head and kindly eye. He belongs to Sven Carlson, a saloon-keeper at 3300 North Racine avenue. When Colonel could lie on the floor, keeping one eye on the door and the other on his master, the dog was happy.

Carlson was proud of Colonel, too. He boasted of the dog’s cleverness—how he would fetch and carry from the grocer’s, and even carry notes to tradesmen in the neighborhood. Colonel never failed to go to the right store.

It was for Carlson that the dog sacrificed himself.

A few minutes before closing time Saturday night Carlson went behind the bar and Colonel followed him.

Two men entered the saloon and walked over to the bar. They did not see the dog.

“Hands up,” ordered one man.

“It’s late, gentlemen; if you wish to drink you have no time for such joking,” replied Carlson.

Both men drew revolvers.

“It’s a long way from a joke,” said the man. “Hands up or we’ll shoot.”

“Go for ’em, Colonel,” ordered Carlson.

The dog sped around the end of the bar as though he had been shot from a catapult, his hair bristling, uttering deep growls; and the bandits backed away.

Then one of the men fired a shot, and the dog toppled over and lay still.

Carlson gave a roar of rage when he saw Colonel fall, and, grasping a bung starter, climbed over the bar.

The holdups fled.

Carlson chased them a block before he gave up the pursuit.

Colonel was taken to Thomas Kendrew’s veterinary hospital at 3039 Sheffield avenue, bandaged and put into a private kennel with clean, sweet straw to lie upon.

“He surely will die,” said Dr. Kendrew. “I think there is no hope for him. The bullet went into his hip and through some of his vital organs.

“If every man could die as gallantly as Colonel this would be a better world.”

TRICK MULE

Kansas City Star

If you’ve been to the horse show this week you’ve seen Henry and Zip. Henry—his last name is Harbaugh—is 18 years old and lives near Bedford, Mo., when he’s at home. Zip is 8 years old, and if you don’t believe he’s the most wonderful trick mule in the world, you’d better not mention it to Henry.

Zip knows how to sit up on his haunches like a rabbit and walk around on his hind legs with Henry on his back, and walk across the tanbark arena on his knees, and—oh, innumerable things. Also he can buck in the most humorous way—you’re quite sure nobody but Henry could stick on.

There’s an interesting story connected with Henry and Zip. Zip is an educated mule, and he is helping make Henry an educated boy. For, the money that Henry receives for his talents and Zip’s goes for Henry’s education. The boy is half way through the high school at Avalon, Mo., and when he finishes, he hopes to go to the University of Missouri. And the talented Zip is a great help to a fellow who’s trying to get an education. For Henry is drawing down $50 and expenses for his week’s work at the Kansas City Horse Show, and he has hopes of repeating the performance at St. Louis next week.

Col. W. V. Galbraith, general manager of the horse show, got a letter from the trick mule’s owner last week. The letter told about all the wonderful things Zip could do—and he can, too—and said if the colonel could find a place for him, please to let Henry know at once, as it’s one hundred miles from Bedford to Kansas City, and it would take some little time to ride. The boy, having no money to spend on railroad fare, proposed to ride his mule to Kansas City. The colonel was so pleased by the boy’s enterprise that he sent him word to come and enclosed money to bring Zip by railroad. Of course, strictly speaking, a mule doesn’t belong in a horse show, but Colonel Galbraith figured that a trick mule named Zip was too good a bet to overlook.

The boy started training his mule five years ago, when he was 13 years old and Zip was 3. Henry lived on a farm and he had no brothers and sisters. So he made a pet of Zip, and taught him all sorts of tricks. Then he began showing him at county fairs and saving the money that he got to spend for education. One of these days he hopes to be as well educated for a boy as Zip is for a mule. And if they gave degrees to mules, Zip would certainly be a Ph.D.

Zip is also quite a teacher. He has taught this country boy a philosophy of life.

“You have to be patient—patient and kind,” Henry said yesterday. “The first thing I ever taught Zip took me two hours and a half. I wanted to see if I could make him lie down. I grabbed his opposite foreleg and held it up. I just had to tire him out, but at last he keeled over. Next day he did it in two minutes. He had learned what I wanted. It was easy after that.”

Henry had never seen a trick mule, but he began thinking of other tricks. With infinite patience he showed Zip what was wanted.

“Then he did it because he loved me,” said the boy simply.

Henry never uses a whip to teach Zip tricks. He feeds him sugar, and is just kind to him and works with him and is patient. Now he learns faster than ever. You can teach an old mule new tricks, according to Henry.

This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I.

—Hippopotamus Pete.

INDEX TO NEWS STORIES

Transcriber’s Note:

While the width of the articles given within is narrower than regular text in this ebook, the column width as printed in the original publication has not been retained.

Punctuation has been standardised. Alternative spelling and variations in hyphenation, and punctuation have been retained as in the original publication except as follows: