The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 11, 1896, Page 15

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, (DAY, OCTOBER 1896. /9 AN ARTIFICIAL PARADISE / Golden Gate Park’s Lake and the Cataract o AT 1 I s ABEY 2 Francices Hhllce Gain Health and Muscle on Stow Liake said an esrnest feminine voice | “Now,” ‘ o glance over her port shoulder, | »d along on the thwart of the boat | pidships so as to shift ballast, then, ing her boat “trimmed,” she bent her and *“‘gave way'’ with a vim. Some | boat lengths ahead was & boat which was | eeding along under the impulse im- irted to it by a pair of bending oars, the dles of which were firmly grasped by | the shapely hands of alady well known in | San Francisco society. This boat was | leaving behind, in its wake, a train of bub- bles which danced in the sunshine. Under | its keel bubbled the water musically. | The wielder of the oars pulled *‘like a ma- | jor,” only she feathered her oars like an | old salt. The ladies have a new fad. They are learning to row on Stow Lake, at Golden | Gate Park. Thev have started gently | with small biceps and a wholesome fear of | callcus places and blisters on their hands. They have progressed in skill aquatic and have developed their muscles. They know ‘port” and ‘“‘starbeard’ and when to ‘feather high” and when to i low.” Some have acquired a t,which they use only when | are boating on the lake, but then it is very fetching. They can breathe easier, row harder, stick to it longer, make their boat go more steadily and faster, get less | biisters, pull more strokes without hitting their rowing partners, make a straighter wake without a rudder and ran up along- “all aboard,” ather side of the boat-landing more neatly than | y could when the summer opened. ne trick is catching. the; Ladies go to the lake without knowing a thing about a They step in gingerly, with sundry screams or ejaculations, and the subject of their remarks is, in the main, that they did not know that the boats ould tip so easily. They take the oars, L n away forward and poke their hands y down the bottom of the boat and point the blades of their oars well sky- ward. They splash the water, roll ihe boat, rub the skin off the inside of their soft, white fingers, ‘‘catch crabs” and learn—possibly because they see that their friei:ds have learned—to row a boat. Handsome horses draw family carriages up the somewhat steep siope to the height upon which the Btow Lake boathouse stands. The ladies bring their children, sometimes the children’s nurses, and, with hampers filled with lunch, which they spread later in the pine grove just west of the boathouse, they have come prepared to stay the better part of tie day. They get afloat as soon as possible and very soon are showing how they can row, with ever- growing satisfaction. When they become tolerably proficient and meet a friend who may be a social rival they may try a little bout with the oars after the fashion already described. Not only the ladies are learning to row and are making a fad of it. They are ri- valed in the fidelity with which they de- vote themselves to this branch of muscle- developing athletics by at least a score of Chinese women. Often the Chinese women come to the lake without an escort. They are there every day and g0 out rowing | every day. They do not ask any instruc- tion in rowing, such as Louis Obnimus, | the keeper of the boathouse, imparts to the Caucasian ladies.. Their idea appears tclbe to get afloat and then laugh as much boat. small a f§vossible. Whether they can row orare to¥ally ignorant concerning boats, they laugh pretty constantly from the time they fi_m take the oars in band until their sport is over. The habit has so grown upon white ladies that it is absolutely safe to predieg that they will appear on certain days, whenever the weather is fair. Their faces and the stroke that they pull have become an accent. The owner of the voice | perfectly familiarto habitues of the boat- | five to the minute, possibly. They drip house. Among them are some very wealthy ladies who find this the pleasantest form of diversion that they have been able to discover. They do not wear navy-blue blouses with *‘cute” little anchors in the corners of their naval cut collars like the young ladies who affect yachting, but they would be able to handle a dory neatly in a fresh blow and fair sea with some men. Stow Lake is the highest artificial lake constructed for adornment and diversify- | ing of park scenery in existence in the United States, and probably the highest of -any similarly created and similarly de- voted body of water in the world. That is to say that it is unique and not alone in this particular. The principal comparison with park lakes in the United States must be with those of Central Park in New York and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, N. Y. But the lakes in these two great Eastern cities, both being of artificial origin, are not on the heights but are in the depthsof the pleasure ground. Consequently, while they are pleasing features of park scenery they are not scenic in the sense that from their surface wide vistas are opened to view. Bui Stow Lake is raised hundreds of feet above the sea level by pumping ma- chinery, and it was located on a high hill simply that it might be the most wonder- ful artificial park lake in the world. This claim is modestly advanced for it without fear of contradiction or dispute. A huge ledge was blasted partly away to make a basin for it and the remnants of this ledge constitute a beetling island not far from the northern end of the basin. Then another island was made artificially, hay- ing upon it an artificial cascade of con- siderable size and much beauty. Then came the big waterfali, which tumbles and splashes into the lake from a height of something like 100 feet, its source being the reservoir supply which has been forced up to that elevation. Uvon the artificial island semitropical vegetation is growing rankly. Around the sides of the big waterfall on Strawberry Hill the huge fronds of ferns have thrived beyond expectation. The artificially made banksof the lake are grassed and on the inner edge of the sheet of water, the Strawberry Hill edge, many plants, flowering and otherwise, have been placed. While it is impossible to accurately por- tray the progressive development of bi- cepe on the part of the lady wielaers of oars, it is fair to remark that the San Franciscan is favored in this particular over her sister in New York, for the Cen- tral Park boats are pulled by hired men and the park boating trip has no advan- tage other than the enjoyment of com- paratively tame park areas which the windings of the watery lane known as the lake present to the passive vassenger. The New York girl gets no added muscle this way.. She might get a little, but the great municipality of New York treats her as if it were unsafe to let her row. But when the breezes from the Pacific, blowing freshly in from over the gener- ous width of 6000 miles of blue sea that chafes alike the shores of Asia and of America, sets all aflutter all the ribbonsof the aquatic belle of Stow Lake it is a picture worth going to the park to see. Bhe is lithe, erect and strong. Her hands are sometimes encased in gloves when the sun threatens to tan with the wind their immaculate whiteness. She has on her cheeks the glow of health and in her eyes the reflection of thorough enjoyment. Her eyes may be dark or may be blue, but in either case they are as good mirrors for the spirit of fun to show itself in as the round world affords, Cadiz not excepted. Her dresa is sirictly up to date, fitting superbly, and appropriate for the wearer and for the occasion. It has strength and elasticity. But no fabric is equal .in elas- ticity to the flexible muscles which urge flash as they run up to a speed of thirty | and dally with the smooth waier as the victorious belle waits for her vanquished | rival to come up. They furnish the best | | music nossible to accompany the laughter aud jollity of the lake party or family m‘o—l nic, as they strike the little white caps with clock-like regularity and precision. There are some girls who can pull a regu- | lar man-of- war stroke. | Along a seemingly endless shore line, which the belle sees as she urges on her shallop, the breakers of the Pacific Ocean boom and enamel the shelving sands with snowy foam. BShe stops rowing and | looks off seaward, being raised far above | the ocean, and, while she smells the fresh grass of the lake’s turl margins and hears the songs of the wild birds on Strawberry Hill, ste sees big ships with masses of sails like huge snowdrifts piled up against their trim masts. She is at once in a land-locked lagoon and at sea with the China and Australian liners. All of the varied pageantry of the sea is hers to en- joy. Framed by the lake and the over- banging and sunny sky, with the deep blue ocean for a background, she is a | pretty picture. At the same time it may be remarked that there is no other park lake in the world that commands such a view. The majority of the Chinese women who splash with the oars and astonish the many thousands of fishes in Stow Lake by their queer aquatic antics go for the most part dressed for business. They are all bareheaded, of course. They wear a blue upper garment and dark trousers, snowy- white stockings and Chinese shoes. Upon their wrists are the inevitable green brace- lets of jade stone. They have some chil- dren along occasiorally. The men who | attend them are few, and more often they demonstrate their complete and entire | emancipation from social shackles by coming and going without having any tyrannical man to mar their pleasure or to even hint at sexual inferiority. But occasionally, while the Caucasian belle holds her oars suspended, there ap- pears at the boat ianding, from which all lacustrinic voyagers depart in boats, a vision like a human butterfly. In short, bilities of color as lavishly applied to the adornment of a belle of the almond-eyed co-dwellers in the town; her hair, plas- tered and fixed in inflexible folds by the application of pomades and oils, fairly gorgeous with artificial flowers, such as the gavest that ever grew in the gardens of far Cathay. Her cheeks have layer upon layer of fixed color upon them which make up a total result in concentrated hue like an Alpine glow on a fog bank. Her clothes are so shiny and so vari- colored that they produc: ‘effect which may be summed up as iridescent. She knows that she is “stunning” in her make-up and she does not care who knows the one fact or the other. It is significant of the faith which she reposes in her artificial complexion that she does not row. Therefore her complexion does not become streaked or striped by little telitale rills of Mongolian perspiration. The other women labor at the oars while she sits, like a petted child, in a rustling mass of silks et al., on a thwart and tries the effect of her moon-shaped eyes on the boatmen—the coquetry of Canton and the physical languor of the far East, coupled with a catlike enjoyment of sunshine, ease and being petted.’ 1f ever a human being could be suspected of a desire to purr, this would be the person. The lake is not monopolized by the ladies, but they are the more frequent visitants. Professional men walk out around the iake on the well-kept path- way every Sunday morning, with chests thrown out,with flaunting boutonniere and dispensing an aroma of choice tobacco as they make the circuit. The favorite route is out McAllister street and back by the the Stow Lake boat on in a friendly race | Park and Ocean road or over the park's with another aquatic belle, The oars | broad thoroughfares. this is a Chinese realization of the possi- | N S O BT O b SRR Do Things “Just Happen” Without / Cause? Have youa ever thought of the relation which may exist between what we are ac- cust omed to call ‘“mere coincidences’’? A phrase like this explains nothing, but simply notes that occurrences whicn seem to have .no connection with each other, nevertheless come together in a way that startles attention. You are sitting in idle reverie and the image of a friend comes vividly into your mind, perhaps in connection with some unknown event. Later you learn thatat the very time you were thinking of him he aid pass through that experience and wished that you were with him. Oryou arise some morning with an inner convic- tion that a relative bas died. He was well when you last heard of him. There 1s apparently no reason why you should suppose he has passed from Ife, but you believe it, notwithsianding these facts. In a few days information comes that he died on the night when your impression was received. Are these cases ‘‘mere co- incidences?” It has been observed that crime fre- quently becomes epidemic after the com- mission of some deed which excites gen- eral horror. Is thisagain only a coinci- dence? Wars, panics and pestilences are said to recur generally. Are these ‘‘coin- cidences” too? A thousand illustrations might be cited of concurring events and commingled facts which are too striking to escape observation, but whose significance is evaded for lack of explanation by the repetition of a phrase. Surely it is perti- nent to inquire if theremay not be some reason why they coincide? We may yroperly question too whether circum- stances are ever due to chance. The idea that anything happens seems oddly out of place in a world confessedly governed by laws. From the smoothing of a pebble to the evolution of mind order prevails in natural processes. The connec- tion between cause and effect is always maintained. Each kingdom claims its own and puts forth no unrelated thing. Law governs the formation of a globe from fire-mist, evolving its various ele- ments by orderly means that permit no chance results, no causeless changes. The millions of existing creatures are under its sway. Law makes the rain to fall and the mist to mount upward. It causes fire to consume and light to speed forth into space. Even the shifting wind obeys the pathway it has traced. Where, then, does the element of chance enter into nature’s domain? ‘We may be told that while law cer- tainly does control the phenomena of this He Gathers Skulls' for a Living About five and forty miles below Port- land. on the Oregon side of the Columbia; the broad expanse of water here flows without a ripple, and is deep and as stifl as death. The bank rises high above the water’s level, and stretches away back to the timber line. - Just above this point is “Coffin Rock,” which was the starting place to ““the happy hunting ground” of the various Oregon tribes of Indians, but the very high water of 1862 swept Coffin Rock of all of its deposits to the point be- low. Itisa lonely place, without sound, save the call of the cricket in the grass, or the hoot of the screech owl nestled in the adjacent timber. Here the overflowing waters of nearly a half a century ago lodged the remains of many tribes, high and dry, literally moving the last resting- place of their dead, for no Pacific Coast tribe ever buried their dead below the sur- face of the earth. Some hedged them about with rocks, above the ground, leav- ing the face upward and exposed. Others 1 put a bark covering over them, while others were suspended from limbs or left in the forks of trees. Time has robbed every fortn of its substance, and left only the whitened bones and bleached skulls. Students, dentists ana physicians are eager to secute these trophies for articula- tion. So great is the demand that at least one man has for years followed the hazardous business of gathering these skulls for the mharket. It1s risky, for the few remaining Indians still keep vigil over the remains of their dead, and to be caught in the act would mean a prisoner in the recesses of the neighboring moun- tains, followed by a death of slow torture, for no quarter or mercy would be shown the victim. Still, knowing this, Howard Clause, a recluse, nightly risks his life to gatber these grinning, whitened skuils, and every now and then & box of large and small. skulls are shipped from Port- land, Or., to the various noted seats of medical and dental learning in the East. material world, it has nothing to do with such concerns as have been suggested. Such a reply, although clearly an as- sumption, is perhaps justified by the present state of scientific attainment. The laws of matter have been carefully in- vestigated, but the realm of causes imma- terial has escaped observation. No laws have been discovered therein; conse- quently it is assumed that none exist. But the widespread interest in mental phenomena which has been developed during tbe past decade or two has grad- ually led up to a different view. The in- visible is no longer the non-exisignt. The tangible is not the only real. So many unsuspected, or at least discredited, powers of mind have been disclosed thata solution is now readily given to problems which had long remained inscrutable mys- teries. In some cases scientific experi- ment has proven the reality of these powers, as that of suggestion, so amply demonstrated in hypnotic practice. Other cases have been as well verified by private investigation, leaving no room for doubt in the minds of candid explorers that mental powers include a capacity to act beyond the confines of the brain. A whole | series of marvelous possibilities has been disclosed. Little as is yet known of then it is already clear that these powers are not fugitive, but act according to law. That thought is readily transferred from mind to mind without extraneous aid few. will ionger deny. Cases of thought trans ference are too frequent to be dismissed ag imaginary, or to admit the supposition that they are ‘‘mere coincidences.” The only adequate explanation is that thought does travel through the invisible ether which surrounds us. 1f we consider that thought is a mental act, and like all other acts involves the use of a certain degree of force, or energy, it will be easy to un- derstand that it sets up a definite vibra« tion in etheric substance. This vibration reaches another brain which receives itas an impression of the thought sent forth, It is, in fact, a kind of mental telegraphy. In the days when it was supposed that a telegraphic message could only travel over a continuous wire, it was the fashion to scout such an explanation as savoring too much of the *‘supernatural.’” Now that messages are actually sent from wire to wire across intervening spaces this ob- jection has been swept away, for although wires cannot yet be dispensed with, it is enough for the justification of our theory to show that vibration is communicated to the ether. 5 Here, then, we have a natural explanae tion of those mysterious coincidences in thought which have been used as illustra- tions. Your friend, by thinking intentiy of you in connection with his experience, brought it and himself before your mental sight. It was not supernatural. It was not even strange when you know why it occurred, but was quite as much a matter of course as is the delivery of a telegram That was once impossibie, too, but as the world rolls on it brings now and then new things and new forces into activity. The present is pre-eminently a period of such unfoldment, as is shown by its remark- able discoveries and its even more remark~ able inventions. Isit not, then, more in keeping with the spirit of our age to seek an explanation of mysteries than to brush them aside as mere results of chance, Similarly we may believe that a convice tion which arose wholly from within, and which was subsequently verified, must have been the result of thought transfer« ence. It wasreceived in sleep because in that state the brain is far more receptive to impressions than when busied with making thoughts. For this reason, al- though our minds catch frequent impres= sions during the day, those which come to us in sleep are usually more vivid and lasting. Accepting this view of thought transe mission we are able to understand how & criminal idea may be spread. Notonly does the criminal set up his own vibration in etheric space, but every mind which dwells upon his crime sends out a suge gestion of the deed. Many minds make the thought intense. Can we, then, who have learned something of the power of suggestion, marvel that ready actors take up the thought, repeating that evil deed ? Investigators are only on the threshold of unseen realms in this age, and hardly peer across the borders. What they have learned, however, has already discredited the idea that nature is limited to the sphere of our sense perceptions. What lies beyond Melongs to nature, too, and is evidently subject to natural law. Roent« gen’s discovery of the X ray discloses, moreover, the fact that our conceptions of even visible nature were not correct, and tnat the invisible bears much closer rela- tion to it than was supposed. We may therefore assume that in future scientific study will include investigation into thesa realms of mystery in which we are ene folded. Then perhaps we may discover the causes of other coincidences, and learn why the cycles recur. “We may find that law governs earthquakes as fully as eclipses, and that not even a disaster comes by chance, but, like a comet in the orderly constellations of the heavens, bears its relation to orderly events. Mzrore M. THIRDS.