Evening Star Newspaper, March 11, 1923, Page 67

FICTION Part 5—8 Pages TAMOND merchants } Antwerp ! woman, with only the additional guar- (@. will tell you, almost without consulting their lists, just where all the famous preclous Stones in the world are to be found. The Jewelry experts of Lendon possess Vaults full of lengthy descriptions of the “made pieces which arc the prod- uct of the greatest artists in such work. matden lano dealers in New York have what they belleve 18 a virtual inventory of the fortunes in jewels possessed by America. Yet none of thesc experts know, except in the vaguest way, of an immense treasure, incalculable, both new and antlque, priceless and unlque, scattered over all parts of the world, although retained in the hands of a comparative few. This is treasure which the most: daring jewel thieves do not attempt to loot, for the simple rea- son that they would never think of looking for anything of great value where it happens to be. This treasure is often carried about the country in the most casual way; somettmes it is on the person of an old dian of a mongrel dog. Sometimes it is worn in plain sight while people pass it by, never dreaming that it can be real. This treasure s the hoarded jewel wealth of the gypsles, of which the poorest family has enough-to make a rich American woman proud. 1t s practically unheard of for any thief to look into the red wagons or examine the trinkets that the young girl in a red skirt and a green handker- chief on her head may wear strung around her neclk or her waist. In the first place, these do not look real. They are entirely too big! I was sitting once by a gypsy fire In a little wood behind St. Louls, where, during all of my childhood, I had had the company of some Bentleys and Wel- lers, the former English and the iatter Hungarian gypsles. Their round, #ell constructed tents were as familiar as |the Kads bridge. and the small truck | farmers who lived nearby used to be- {come very nelghborly with them. On | this occasion a girl of such a family, Lardner Lauds Allison; Knows Fi O the editor: Somewheres be- tween 30 and 60 yrs. ago they was a little boy named Jim Allison that lived in a town| called Marcellus, Mich., and once.or twice every yr. his folks took him to les so as he could get a taste of city life. In them days Niles was full of won- derful sights such as the Lardner boys and ete. but Jim didn't have eyes for nothing only the fish pond in Tuttle's yard. This indeed was a sight to see, as You take most fish ponds in towns like Niles and you look at them and wonder where they got the name fish pond, but the Tuttle fish pond was full ot fish a majority of who was real live fish. Jim used to stand stare at them by the hr. and when his folks asked him what he wanted to be when he srowed up Le would always tell them he wanted to be the proprietor or at bad enough you will get it so any way Jim 18 now the owner and managing cditor of 1 of the biggest fish ponds in the U. S. and thousands of people ! sh, He Says you look at them they have got on difterent garments. change color at will and wouldn have no trouble gétting into Harvard or anywhere elee, They feed mostly on shell fish and Mr. Allison had recently give them a crawfish which was a fat and healthy crawfish, when he 1st. met the octo- pus boys but now they wasn't noth- ing left of him only his skeleton. However ‘he was walking around ltke he did not have a care in tho | world and a person could -not help |trom wondering wby so many people pretty near kills themselfs taking off | when all as they would halt to do would be to spend a few minutes amongst the octopuses and they would come out looking Barnes. \ R. ALLISON'S aquarium ain't 4 like most aquariums where the | same fishes make their home yr. after yr. Every spring when the tourists has went morth.from Miami Beach he opens up the whole works ana ileaves all his fishes go free and the | next ‘fall he sends Charley Thompson “ANOTHER FISH CALLED THE GAG, WHICH I STOOD IN FRONT OF HIS CAGE FOR A HALF HOUR IN THE HOPES OF HEARING SOMETHING FUNNY.” Days & 1-2 a dollar apiece to go in and look at his collection of fish and business is {ncreasing to such a pt. that In a couple mpre yrs. Jim expects s books to show a dcficit of not more than $25,000 per annum. Mr. Allison's aquarium as I nick- named 1t is located at Miami Beach, * J"la. He has got a apt. over it which Zhe calls his sleeplng quarters in a © Joking way as he don't get much .-chance to sleep what with this fish “and that fish always hollering for their bottlo and etc. ® % % % WISHED I could tell you the namos of all the different fish and Xhelr habits and what they come from “hut @id not have time to take notes nd will half to be content with de- cribing a few of them from memory. . " One of the 1st fishes as you go in '4s called the Jolt Head Porgy and is {“probably s brother of Georgle who :izsed the girls and made them cry jomna i Georgle had a mush anything £31ke Jolt Head you can’t blame the girls. = Then they's & fish called the Fool ~Fish on acct. of acting so silly and another fish called the Gag which I 5tood in front of his cage for a 1-2 hr. sn the hopes of hearing something funny til] Jim finely told me the fish was named by somebody that tried to eat one of them. * Acrost the aisle from the Gag is the Pudding Wife which Jim says is so £alled because its husband deserted it. Then they's some members of the shark family including one named the Nurse Shark because it is more Zentler than other sharks but if I met one tn ewimming I would be tempted to say good night Nurse gentle or no zentle. Jm'e prize pets however is a bunch of octopuses whish must of been caught at Palm Beach as every time out in the ocean with instructions to bring back all the different kinds ‘These birds can a couple Ibs. by exerclse, dle* and etc. | like Jim | - MAGAZINE SECTION The Sunday Sha - WASHINGTON, D. C., SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 11, 1923, GYPSIES, WITH AMAZING WEALTH, FIND WAYS TO PROTECT THEIR PRICELESS HEIRLOOMS 3 € £ £ A £ who had been away to school, came to the camp to visit her old playmates, Karka and Elizabet. With renewed in- terest, as we all sat there, she fingered ka's pretty neck and remarked to me, who had also been away and become somewhat sophisticated: j “These things would sell for a good deal, I do belleve, Loulse. They look like that new kind of jewelry that they are selling, now, in the stores. Some of these strings cost as much as ten dol- lars. Remember how we used to love to dress up In all Karka's stuft?” 1 agreed that the string might, in- deed, prove u popular seller and that it would bring easily as much as ten dol- lars. As a matter of fact, the young the string of green beads around Kar- |- triend, who had been sitting by the fire with me all that afternoon, was a. jewel expert whom I had brought out, after having my curiosity aroused concerning the pretty baubles which I had always seen worn in such profusion by the | worzen. of the two familles * % * S he had just murmured in my ear | some astounding information I was too daged to talk much and after a cup | of tea and some of the honey cakes that | Miere dye, “my mother” (as Mrs. Bent- ley was called by everyone) gave us, we soon went away. The young man was which they have got labels for. This man Thompson knows all the fishes by name and keeps a address book where he can look them up. The most of them is glad to be caught as Jim sets a good table and every rm. is a rm. with bath, Z He also watches out for their health and entcrtainment and etc. and when any of them complains he don't rest till they have got what they want. Like for inst. they was a Logger Head turtle in the aquarium this winter that kept acting restless and bored and enapped at everybody that come in the aguarium and Jim fed him all the delicacles which Logger Head Turtles is supposed to of been broughten up on but nothing seemed to satisfy this particular L. H. Turtle. So finely Jim got the {dear that it was not the food which L. H. was complaining about but it must be that he was lonesome or something so finely Jim Invited Relnald Wer- renrath the barytone to come and spend a couple of wks. at the aquarium and Reinald come and went down stairs to the Logger Head Turtle's cage twice a day and sung for him and you would be surprised the way the turtle brightened up. . * % % ¥ €6 70U have got to know your fish,” says Jim. ' “A good many aqua- rium keepers might of figured it 'was just any kind of einging that the Logger Head wanted. They might of called in a Irish tenor and next they would of had a dead turtle on their hands.” How much less misery they would be in this world did everybody adopt Jim's slogan. “You have got to know your fish.” RING'W. LARDNER, Great-Neck, Long Island, March o, A rather pale. “Easily worth one hundred thousand dollars,” was what he repeated, with awe, “uncut emeralds—old-Aslatic, without doubt—enormous—a fortune— the earrings worth twenty-five thousand —the red ring is a ruby of marvelous | color; would hate to value it—another | fortune. Heavens and carth, have they any more?” “I should judge that there must be fifty pleces that you didn’t see,” I told him, “I didn’t dare to appear too curious.” All the way into the city he kept re- peating that it was “incredible, incred- iblet Despite my frantic efforts to prevent it, the firm got wind of the matter and sent out their chief jewel expert, a gray ol individual, to see what he could buy. He returned raging and snorting, to re- port that all the stuft the gypsles pos- sessed was junk! He valued it at the most around five hundred dollars. The £ypeles had solemnly declared that that was all they. owned, or ever had owned, and that they would be only too glad to sell it. Refusing this offer, he re- turned to the house to heap scorn upon the young expert. That very night, however, the whole encampment, with perennial beds of flowers and many trees that we children had planted, and with sheds for the horses, the deep ditches around the | tents, the little gravelly artificial beach | along the small stream that murmured before the pretty site—all, all disap-, peared. Labor that must have been in- | cessant throughout the night smoothed | away overy trace of that which had | been there for years. Only the trees stood. The beach was destroyed. Not a vestige remained of so much as e tent pes! The two families had owned that bit of land and for years the title stood In their name, but no one of them ever returned to claim it. Bt. Louls, so. far as I have been able to learn, has never heard of one of them since. That is how practically no word has ever seeped through into -the gorgio world of the marvels that may be found in almost any gypsy tent and few have ever thought of the gypsy wagon as a treasure charfot. “Yet, at that, and knowing how my friends have guarded this secret, I give it out with my tongue in my cheek for the thief who may read this and try to loot the next gypsy caravan he meets. I do not say that the gypsy has supernatural powers, but I do say that he has developed some power that is not known to us, and I am pertectly sure that if some robber, led on by this description, tries to make a haul amongst the wagons, he will find nothing.. I will fllustrate this with a story of what I saw myself about such a matter. 4 ‘The New Jersey gypsy familles which often camp at Morristown have a good many friends throughout that section, as well they may, for they are a law- ablding, decent and thrifty lot, who mind their own business, own property in ‘the state, and sent thelr daughters to the schools. Yet the very word “gypey” is enough .to send some jig- norant types of. mind off into hysterics. A certain under-sheriff was of this type, and as there. had ‘been many ‘small thefts around:the town; one:year ‘whan Y was spending 2 few -weeks with this i | man, ostensibly my escort and humble | i but at the end he disgustedly kicked “RIGHT UNDER THEIR NOSES WERE DIAMONDS AND EMERALD: RUBIES, SEMI-PRECIOUS STONES, MON ALS, STICKPINS, GOLD BEADS, FINE WATCHES.” BELTS, PINS, COR- particular lot, he came to the camp, in a most offensive manner, and with two burly and insulting assistants, proceed- ed to go through it with extreme thor- oughness. Not a corner escaped his attention, a pile of clothes back into a box and said that if he had known what poor trash they were he would never have given them credit for even the wit to take anything of value, e TAVERY gypsy during this process Auhad sat perfectly and rather strangely quiet. Not a word had been spoken, and none was spoken until after the ugly strangers were gone. Then two of the older women sighed, and they were given water and told to lie down. They looked very tired. The rest of the group slipped out- side, prepared coffec and drank it | There was a subtle air of the letting down of a great strain. Yet when I tried to say something about this, even I, who, I do humbly think, am counted an honest friend, was met with averted eyes. T asked no more, | being somewhat breathless mysell. | And this is the reason why: i Right under the noses of those! avaricious, greedy and corrupt men (Who were only seeking some pre- text for an accusation), both han- dled by them and worn on the hands and necks of the women and chil- dren, for any eye to see, wexe dla- monds and emeralds, rubbles, semi- precious stones, money belts, pins, corals, stickpins, gold beads and fine watches—In short, the treasure of this lot of families. In the trunke disgustedly dumped and regarded with disappointment-were bolts and bolts of silks and velvets, men’s valvet sults, & box containing at least a thousand large, solid gold buttons, a whole trunk jammed full of such gorgeous -eastern embroideries that an ignorant eye could hot but kindle at them. At the same time it was Qquite clear that none of these things was correctly seen by the unfriendly sheriff. Hints I have had from a good many sypsies that in time of danger the 0ld wemen can throw “the veil”-over unfriendly eyes. That is the reason why the gypsies have the reputa- tion of being so Door, or possessing nothing. At all events, that was what 1 myself saw that one time— and which I cannot begin to explain, but in which I belleve. And that is why I am not afraid to tell of the treasures possessed by this people, i) LA W Believe in Their Power to “Throw Veil” Over Unfriendly Eyes—Some Articles Have De- signs Which Go Back to Ancient Egypt—Stones That Look Too Big to be Real— Ruthless Search of Wagons by Officious Undersheriff Proves Fruitless — One Who Was Almost in Want Would Not Part With Treasures, Though They Would Have Brought Him-a Fortune. Unappraised Ccllection Rivaled Only by Hidden Wealth of India. e i most ‘elsborate design often holds 2 big emerald, and the whole is so gor- goous, so beyond what the modern world knows of jewelry, that when you see it on the red waist of the little old woman who is telling your “fortune” you probably smile at what you consider the childlike van- “HE HAD JUST MURMURED IN MY EAR SOME ASTOUNDING. IN- FORMATION: ‘EASILY WORTH ONE DOLLARS,” HE REPEATED WITH AWE.’ toward whom I feel so stromgly. I am-sure that they can protect them- selves. I am also sure, though, that In time they will allow the sclentists, who are now trying to help them re- construct their own history, to see and appraise the marvels . that they posséss. Many of the money belts, for {nstance, are over 500 years old,] one piece, usually of either high value or of great beauty of ‘design, being put on the belt in about twenty-five years, and the link that binds it being made by the eldest son of that gen- eration. 1t is his business to learn the goldsmith’s trade for: the benefit of ‘the family jewel box. ~That is why most of:the jewelry is o price- less. It is handmade and made as little other jewelry has been fash- foned for thousands of years. It 1s of pure gold and the purest of silver, and-both 80 soft that -the greatest care is required in handling the Pleces. - Gold filigree work of the -BUNDRED THOUSAND ity of a race which appears to you 50 primitive. ‘Well, that flaming thing may be hundreds of years old.. It may have been made by. some. of.tha famous gypsy goldsmiths of Rumania:or Bohe- mia, and the stone may have come from Ceylon or India. It may be worth thirty thousand dollars. : The . Bowmans, of. England, the Langs and the Larkins possess mar- velous collections. Some of the corals, round, blg 'as @ man’s thumb, twenty yards in length In the string, have the color that only great age can give. ‘The only string I ever saw that could. equal these was one which the Maha. rajah of Baroda hed with him when he visited this country. When I in- terviewed him he told me that it was fully. eight thougand years' old and that he had -been offered a thousand pounds for it in Bond street, London. The Hungarian gypsies have gold beads which are engraved, every min- ute particle ‘of them, with the figure’ = Frgas of the snake, one of the sacred sym- bols. With a microscope you can trace the beauty and accuracy of this work, vet it is done by men who never heard of that instrument, and who make their lines as true as that of the etcher. The unalded “gorgic” eye cannot even follow them. * x x % HE Russian gypsy and the Arab- ian gypsy love silver and work wonders with it, but the French, Spanish, English and the English- Hungarian-American gypsy familles TUR to the purest of gold. Their jew- lelry is doubtless the more valuable. The didikai—familles in which the proportion of genuine Gypsy blood is much less than half, often have aut- thentic pleces of old jewelry. A man who keeps a small store in Ohlo, whose father's mother was a posh- and-posh (a half-and-half gypsy) has small but very perfect rubies in a carbuchon brooch, drop earrings of the same, a chain worked in the real and wonderful gypsy style, with tiny | flutings, and a money-belt, with coins | running back to Rumanta, Greece and France, of the fifteenth century. I know that he lives in the most frugal fashion and several times be- | cause of poor business he has been obliged all but to close out his store, but although T have taken an expert to see him, who assured him that his treasures are worth fifty thousand ! dollars, he stubbornly refuses to sell. | That little drop of the gypsy blood in him makes him hold on to those bau- bles. He knows that his grandmother was poor as could be but that she brought to her marriage these signs of her gypsy heritage and he is de- termined that in this one thing he will uphold the traditions. The thing which makes the histor- fans eager to have this great hoard, or, at least, good examples of it, for study 1s that no matter whether the work has been doon by French, Hun- garians, Balkan, Russian, English, Spanish, Arabjan or mid-Asiatic gyp- sies, the designs are the same, and those designs falthfully follow pat- terns set by the goldsmith and jew- elry artificers of ancient Egypt. as much as five thousand years ago. The treasures of the Egyptian prin- cess, now in the possession of the Met- ropolitan Museum of New York city, occupying too good-sized rooms, and still radlant with the colora and the pure gold filigree that once graced her beauty, can. be duplicated in & hundred gypsy wagons that trall quietly- through our roads today. All the gypsies raaintain they came “out of Egypt” and that they were kings there. This -1s Indeed what every gypsy asserts -without. reference to the country which has given him & hyphen. e He may be Hungarian-gypsy, very dark, with wild eyes and stormy mu- sic-in his soul, or English-gypsy with deep blue eyes and the utmost wis- with the Russian-Catholio bellef odd- 1y superimposed on his original con- ceptions and customs, or Arablan- £YPsy, who says he is a Mohammedan, but does not dare to have more than bis proper gypsy wife—Iin every case his statement as to his past is that he was an Egyptian king and that “ghe” whose figure is often on his fewelry:and whom-he-invokes in the tinge of ‘greatest stress, is his “true friend.” . “She” is easily recognised ‘as Ists, the reigning female goddess of the ancient Egyptian faith. The snake, the cat’s head, the lotus flower,the pyramid, the. mummy, the Abls, the_palm tree, are motifs that are- continually geen in worked gypsy jewelry, though many.of the “home talent” artificers do not know the meaning-of the designs Which they faithtully reproduce. 1t is this Which interests scientists. The Gypsy Lore Soclety, resuming its activities after the wan.and contin- uing its scientific work of the lash elghty years, is again taking up the matter of gypsy jewelry, that vast and unappraised collection, which far surs passes anything else that the world holds, with the possible exception of the buried, and hidden for hundreds of years, jewel wealth of India. (Oopyright, 1923.) Famous Horseback Rides. THB famous ride of Dick Turpim the highwayman, to York on hig brown mare Bess, was, as a matte? of fact, an impossibility, seelng thet it was claimed that Dick rode from Gadshill, a distance of nearly one hundred miles, in less than fout hours. At any rate, his presence in Tork at 7:45 o'clock cleared him from the charge of robbing a sallor in Gadshill at 4 o'clock the same morne ing. Cooper Thornhill's ride to and fro between Silton and London, on April 29, 1746, however, was actually per- formed. He rode 213 miles in eleven hours, thirty-three minutes and forty- six seconds, but he bestrode nineteen horses in doing this. This was an average of ninetcen miles an hour. George Osbaldeston, in 1831, on a wager of £1,000 that he would ride 200 miles in ten hours, accomplished the distance in ten minutes over seven hours. He had ridden twenty- elght horses, and was allowed one hour, thirty-two minutes and fifty- six seconds for changes, while hs had kept round and round the cir- cular course on Newmarket heath. He rode over twenty-eight miles an hour. Capt. Selvi of the Italian cavalry performed the exploit of riding 580 miles in ten days. As the Itallan miles are shorter than ours, he traveled fifty-five and a half miles per day, even then no slight feat. Passing over the famous flights of old-time heroes, whose mythical ac- counts read well in story, but do not bear the light of investigation, we find -that the most remarkable rides have been made on our frontiers by the scouts and plainsmen, whose hardy horses enabled them to ac- complish as a matter of course such tests as Capt. Brownson's journey of 400 miles through an Indlan country on the same steed in six days, with no feed other than the scanty herb- age that grew in a mountainous region. Fremont's extraordinary ride from Los Angeles to Monterey, Calif, and back again, in March, 1847, has be- come a matter of history. Accom- panied by two companions and with six lead horses to take their turns under.the saddle, the great explorer set out on his tremendous journey over a mountainous country, with no road but a trace or stock trall, at a eweeping gallop, to pass over miles the first day, fifteen of then. along the maritime defile of El Rinco, where a spur of the mountain jut- ting into the sea compelled them to ride at ebb tide, and even then for a long distance through water. As often as the horses showed sigus of fatigue the saddle was shifted to one of the lead animals and the journey continued almost without a break. On their return from Monterey. oinnamon-colored horse, ridden by Fremont himself, was put to a severe test. After carrving his rider ten leagues one evening, the next day he bore him ninety consecutive miles without the least show of weariness. In fatt, upon his freedom from the saddle the cinnamon led his equine companions into San Luls at & flying gallop, his nostrils distend- ed end neighing with evident delight at his return to his native pastures. This wonderful journey of 8§00 iles was performed in eight days, count- ing two days stop while en route. It is but proper that it should be added, however, that the Spanish mila is shorter by 146% yards than our American mile, which would make & difference of about sixty miles on the whole distance. Rankin, the sccut, at the time of the Meeker massacre, hastening with all speed possible to Rawlins for reinforcements to relleve tho dis- tressed garrison, under Maj. Thorn- burg, rode 160 miles from midnight to midnight To perform this twenty-four-lour perilous journey he rode four horses, two of them to their death. Kit Carson, in his checkered career, made several remarkable rides, of which none was more terrible than his fiight on the burning prairie with two companions, both of whom fell by the way. The poot Miller has made this the theme of one of his most stirring poems. In Civil Service. NE would not think of Mother Goose in connection with TUncle Sam, but recently when & woman took to the Civil Service Commission the request for her transfer to & different department, the clerk whose duty it was to pass on such mattere noticed that her name was Sprat, official manner: Jack Sprat?” “Y u answer, “he’s my husband. laughing_ at_his astonishment, continued: “His name is John, but everybody calls him Jack Sprat The clerk scrutinized the papers fur ther and added, suppose you have learned to eat lean meat by this timeT* “Oh, yes,” she replied, “we try to live up to our name. “AN rlxht. Il order this issued,” and he affixed his officlal O.K. Another woman proved to have the odd name of Mrs. Eve Apple. Noticing the clerk’s incredulous look, she remarked: “Yes, everybody smiles at my name, but you know repeats itself.” cas he interpos: ou accepted an apple instead o giving one.” A colored man sought reinstatee ment as & laborer. = The papers showe ed he had been dismissed for insube ordination, but the department wag willing to give him another triat Taking ug the case, the clerk notioe od that his name was none othep than George Washington. “Oh,” he sald, looking up, “‘se 0 me I've heard of you before.” “Is dat sir?” said the other, much surnd.:z *“I'se afraid you's heard they givq me & bad rep’tation at the bureau, sir