The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 7, 1897, Page 17

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1897 17 TRVEY of the official directory army reveals the names many gentlemen who, while ons of of their country, have, at the become distinguished in lines 1es wholly separate and alien to ns as devotees at the shrine They are officers of the army of an un- ally active or studious bent, who have e large margin of their time leit to them as leisure by their the martial sort in | w . Profession of Arms---Devotees of Music, Art and Science. life and drives at his hobby until it comes to drive himj; it ceases to be his incident occupation in life, but is kis primary one. | Though he never exvoses his estimation of the business, yetin hisinner feelings | bis profession of arms has dwarfed into IS A MASTER OF MAGIC. | - Yn = the trend of some ar native taste which s a pastime. ntlemen are all edu- es, in followirn o4 ch the some they retain only a orptions; -Colonel Middleton, Pianist. edmiss s into such arenasof thought ample for their introduction. :ly, theretore, if such a man 1 predisposition toward any y to manifest that or adaptability in his college be swamped and sunken by dies commanded by the once the candidate nded upon the offi- i a e and respite from the severe exercises of the scl.olastic course They nave spent years but their | | | insignificance and the real thing in lifeis | the hobby, risen to enwrap the man, to | | make him an expression of it, not as an | embodiment of militarism as he was | started in his life path to become. Thbus it occurs that under the blue coat and the epaulettes walks the actor or the art To the world they are lieutenant this and captain that; but to nature and their own their own deep selves one is an expressionist of dramatic force, the other mirrors his surroundings with the brush | | | | and canvas. ‘ Of course it can be accounted that where |a man comes to be great in some l'mul { which is in a manner incident to the business of war that he is pushing some- | thing definitely within the scope of his | | profession. The zone of industry em- braced by the material needs of the army ia 80 wide that studies which a tew years | ago would have been regarded as dilettant- |ism and proverly categoried as hobbies | are now within the recognized sphere of | military practice. Indeed, there are occu- | pations which primarily were actually in- | dulged as hobbies, which the expanding embrace of the military profession has | since inclosed anda they stand to-day as | regular departments of the service. ] | When Lieutenant G. O. Squier, Third | Artillery, began delving into electricity he | did not perceive that such would in a | short while be an aporopriate arm of | military mechanics; but such soon came | to pass, and when he invented a device | for measuring high velocities of projec- tiles, both inside and outside the guns, by | | means of polarized light he was recognized | as more of an inventor than a soldier. It was through Captain John Millis of the | | Engineer Corps diverting his off moments | | with electrical machines that he came to | | conceive the idea of lighting the Bartholdi | statue in the New Yorx harbor, and it was | through his penchant for deiving into the | conduct of the mysterious physical fiuid | that he was put on the Lighthouse Board, | where he still is. | Capfain J. M. Ingalls is s great genius in mathematics; the mobility of his brain | fibers fairly weeps with figures, like dollar | marks in the dreams of a pawnbroker. | His delight used to be to figure out the | | transit of Venusand to indulge in long and involved correspondence with noted professors of mathematics over intricate problems in that science. Under the sol- dier's cloak of the man stalked the | Archimedes, no more fittea by nature to IN MECHANICS, LIEUTENAN T-COLONEL GREEN IS RIPE. begin to expand about him, then the na- tive instinct to do thus and thus rises up out of its swamp prison, broadly blossoms its colors exhales its odors and is to that man forever a thing of beauty and re- freshment. The circumstance, too, of the hobby of : the officer being the thing which his soul -loves, and the season of his leisure often being a period equal to that of his duty, it occurs that he withdraws himself " wholly from the foibles and frivolities of be a military shooter and swabber than was the ancient Syracusan. But a con- zenial place was found for him at Fortress Monroe as instructor of ballistics, throueh which he can lock heads with his students in calculating the degrees of tiie arc made by the howitzer bomb when discharged at a certain angle, impelled by the burning of 50 many grains of powder. Then there is Co.onel James Moore, assistant quartermaster-general, a new arrival in this department. Coionel Moore | bees are already improving the shining | has been & comfortable winter for the is great on anatomy of the horse. Nature intended him for a veterinary Bsculapius. He is charmed by the hind knuckle of & mare when the hinge shows deformities | which impair its lubricity, and on® uch a survey his mind becomes peppered with the rising bubbles of like reported cases. | brass-bound blue and the welling soul of | The articulation of the equine, his mus- | cles, his osseous tissue and his nerve fila- | ments have so long saturated the mental- | | ity of Colonel Moore that he has ceased | father’s spirit; doomed for a certain term meditating short cuts of moving on the enemy, but has gone into the quartermas- ter's department, where he sees to it that the cavairymen are well horsed. And what with Captain E. L. Zalinsky and his dynamite gun, Lieutenant Frank Green of this department whose strong mechanical turn has rmade him signal offi- cer, and Lieutenant J. P. Finlay, whose explorations of the domain of meteorology placed him in charge of the Weather Bureau at San Francisco, and whose dis- | covery of the fact that the tornado always rises in the southeast quadrant of the bam ometric low made him a member of the French Academy, what with all these, I say, riding into distinguished billets on the backs of their much petted hobbies, | what then are we going to do with the poet, the musical composer, the pianist, the tragedian, the magiciun, the biblio- { phile and the. geologist? for surely that | science which tends to the perfection of methods and means for simultaneously destroying large numbers of human ings has no use for these arts which flourish strongest in the weakest of the piping times of peace. Yet the fact that the wing of the service Major Darling’s Musical Soul. has not unfolded so far asto caress with | its. down the cheeks of tbese students | should not detract from the grandeur of the arts they engage in or the glory they have attained in their devotions to them. What schoolgirl has not read the novels | of Captain Charles King, or what San Francisco young miss has not entertained | tion of box-ki ber Sunaay-night beaux with song and music from the compositions of Major John A. Darling of the Third Artillery, who has recently taken a brief leave of the Presidio to seek health in the East? The carol of song breaks out through the the songster drowns the fierce guttural of the man of blood. Hark! the sepulchral tones: | to walk the night"’—and thus in amateur theatricals usea Captain Butler Price to recite the part of Hamlet’s ghost while Lester Wallack, sitting in the audience, greeted his closing sentences with the ap- plause of a critic who knew when the ghost was well pertormed. Wallack mary times urged Captamn Price to take the stage and Fanny Kemble was anxious to star with him, but the captain steadily refused to leave the army, and though he | is still the actor that nature made him, | yet he never quitted the ranks of the | amateur. 5 The same remarks are applicable to Captain Charies Humphries of Angel Island, the magician who knows and does | all the tricks that Herrmann knew, con- | cerning whom the Sunday CaLL had an | account in its issue of January 17. Captain | Humphries, as did Captain Price, ex- | periences the fact that however great may | bean actor’s merit, the world does not come | to know it so long as he remains an amateur, and he cannot elevate his hobby into a profession and sustain himself in the army. Then what has brazen cannon and the weighty caisson, in short, what has ord- nance anyway to do with poetry? Yet, Captain W. B. Gordon, ordnance staff officer at West Polnt, writes the most charming verse; romantic pentameters, iambic idyls, the poetry of love with its soft airs breathing perfume through the melody of words, the artist in language expressing the sentiments or the passions of the soul, the delights of the mind; and outside his window the armed sentry | moves his measured pace around mounds | of cannon balis and big-bellied howitzers | yawn their wide mouths, there, if need be, to beich out fire ana thunder. And while Captain Gordon is writing poetry, and Lieutenant Wise of the Ninth Infantry is being hauled aloft ‘“‘messen- ger’-like on tbe cord of his tandem kites, whereby he demonstrates that a combin. s can be flown which will support the weizht of an observer in' mid- air, and while Lieutenant-Colonel Theo- dore A. Dodge is writing an extension to | his history of Gustavus Adoiphus, the seighbors of Lieutenant-Colonel J. V. Mid- leton, physician-surgeon of the Depart- ment of California, are listening to an | opus of Beethoven which ascends from the windows of the colonel’s house. The nimble fingers of the military physician are deft upon the ivories of the upright, issimos, punctuate and swell and modu- late beneath the touch of one of the most exquisite performers upon the coast, per- haps within the country. But what local lover of science did not “Iam thy | and the staccatos, the crescendos and pian- | feel a loss as of the passing of a brother when Captain Anthony Wayne Vogdes, long stationed at Fort Mason, a few weeks ago folded his tent and sitently moved | away to take a position at some Eastern | rendezvous in obedience to some relent- | less order which took no account of the welfare of California science” The captain is a geologist and a bibliophile; and pro- ducts of his learned labors in a volume of bibliography of paleozoic crustacea now ornament the shelves of the California Academy of Sciences. The specialty in geology of the captain, however, was the trilobite, the earliest form of invertebrates which appears in the silurian rocks. The captain made a profound study of this crab, and great was his joy upon occasion at finding that his loved California had given up a most per- tect specimen of this fossil. It was found (by the captain, I think) in one of the in- terior counties and was of all his collec- tion the most rare and valuable. The erudite papers which the captain wrote upon this trilobite and others of the species are among the most important contributions of which the academy can boast in its department of paleontology. By Captain Vogdes books were held in something of the same esteem as are gems by the lapidary. His library was scientific and in its lines exhaustive. He had the most important collection of United States scientific reports known to exist outside the Government library, and his tireless prowl over the interiors of every second-hand book store in San Francisco had made him thoroughly Lieutenant Nolen, Football Crank. familiar with the resources of those estab- | lishments in direction of his tastes. The captain also wrote many pamphlets on mineralogy, and this bureau of the State government has reason to be thankful for | the numerous contributions which he made to'its literary advancement. FIELD FARINGS IN FEBRUARY The Naturalist at Large Muses on the Mystery of the Blessed TIL this year I had always sup- . posed that the butterflies were J3 creatures of a single season, living their brief, happy summer and passing away with the-falling leaves before the sutumn ramns. I find that in Californis, at least, this is not the case. Our butter- flies, or at any rate some varieties of them, seem to spend the rainy season in a sort of torpor, perched with folded wines, in safe crannies, out of reach of wind and | storm, waiting till the clouds roll by and brighter days come. One such patient waiter I have noted daily for three months past in a corner behind a door, and 1 am sure he has not stirred during all these weeks. He will wave a languid wing or move a foot if molested, but these are all the signs of life he gives. Another bas been spending the winter just inside the edge of a yellow-hammer's abandoned hole, and one rested for; a matter of two months or more on my window ledge, but flew away one sunny day recently, and to-day s handsome gold and brown fellow took flight from under the eaves of the shed roof and fluttered away to where the wild currant is blossoming yonder by tne stream. This probably explains the presence of butterflies in the winter fields. They are not new-comers, but old inhabitants, sun- ning themselves on warm noondays. I have counted a dozen within the last hour fluttering about among the mustard and cress. A little spring salad does not come amiss with them any more than it does with us. It 1s surprising, the number of insects to be noticed about during the winter months. A goldfinch has been traveling up and down the trunk of yonder big tree for the last fifteen minutes searching the crevices for something which he evidently finds, if one may judge from his frequent Jittle pecks and darts at the rough bark, and a dragon-fly is.skimming about on the surface of the pool yonder. I have seen no ants as yet, but a big bumble-bee just went blundering by, and the honey- hour among the swamp- willows. This bees, but I fancy they are' tired enough of honey at present, and are glad to get some fresh bread again. They find this in the yellow pollen of the willow catkins, and devour it eagerly. There is not very much of it as yet, buta fortnicht hence the ground will be strewn with the yeilow powder, and a little later the air will be full of the willow’s winged seeds sailing off to who knows what fair bourn? The airy, fairy things may travel out tbrough the Golden Gate and reach the isles of the South sea. Or they may never come to portatall. It is just because of this ex- treme hazard of fortunes that the willow and other wind-fertilized plants produce such myriads of seed. Millions come to naught, but there are plenty, even after the bees have eaten their fill of yellow brezd. The bees here by the streamside need fresh bread for they have had a hard winter, despite favorable conditions. Seedtime Season no better abiding place than the empty box over there. They had to buila from the ground up, o to speak, but they set to work with a will, and when, the other day, I pried off a side of the box and took a peep at the contents, [ found it solidly filled with snowy, delicate sheets of comb in which was yet scarcely any honey. 1t was a fascinating sight, but a worker bee came out to inquire my business, and I deemed it best to retire. February is a beautiful month to be afleld in. One gets so much of the be- ginning of things. Itseems to me thata loaf of bread can never be a prosaic thing to him whko has walked the February fields. There is such marvelous beauty in the brown, upiurned earth, with its deep furrows where the tender green blades are already pushing sunward. Along the edges and iu warm corners poppies and buttercups are smiling. Blackbirds whistle from the fencetops and the meadow larks sing on theridges and in the furrows. Possibly they pull a few blades of grain, though they are after bugs, and worms rather than the young wheat and barley, but they do enough good as insect-de- stroyers to pay for them, and when your bread tastes unusually sweet and its lightness lifts the heart, be sure it is be- cause somehow the songs of the birds got into the growing of it, and so ripened and mellowed with it that the clangor and crushing of the mill and the kneading of the dough only served to incorporate it still more closely in the crust and crumb of the loaf. That thought ought to make it the bread of thankfulness indeed. There is more than the sweetness of song in your loaf of bread. The blue sky, the brown earth, the tender rain, the whispering south wind, the honet human toil that brought it to perfection have all gone into it to make it “bread, which strengthened man'’s life and is therefore callea the staff ot life.”” They are more than bread—they are words that proceed from the Father of all, by which, and not by bread alone, man liveth. But February brings other beauties than those of the open fleld. Just over the brow of the hill, where the brown upland meets the skyline, the land dips suddenly into a deep canyon. Half a dozen paces away from the sunny field and we are walking in the semi-darkness of the red- wood and laurel shades. The wild straw- berry is in blossom along the edge of the wood, and the huckleberry bushes are tip- | ping out in the exquisite pink and saffron and rosecolor of their new growth. The madrono trees are budding and the twisted manzanitas are a mass of bloom. The edge of the woods is the ylace of all others to find the wild creatures of nature. Within the canyon the air is chill, and herbage, seeds and insects are scarce, so the quail and rabbits and small birds fit and creep about the open, ready to seek covert at the approach of danger. Half 2 dozen ground robins are scratch- ing about in the open. No Central Cali- fornian landscape would be comblete without this plain, little, brown bird some- where in view. Heis a silent creature the They swarmed late in the season and found greater part or the year,with only a single cry—“towh ee”—from which he gets his name, ‘‘brown towhee,” but very early in the season the male bird hasa short, rather feeble, but sweet song with which he wooes his lady. But the towhee, for all his plain garb, isa lovable bird and a thorough-going little gentleman, which is more than can be always said of his more popular cousin, the robin of song and story. It is pleasant tonote the courteous manners of the ground robin iz a mixed company of birds. He is polite even to the English sparrow, and I have seen him make way for a young one of that tribe where all have been scratching among the loose hay about a barndoor. He is an engaging little head of the house during nesting time, too, and grows quite thin and careworn attending to the wants of the family. The pair set up housekeeping early in the year, usually in the low busbes, lupin, southernwood, greasewood and manzanita that cover these hills, and raise two, sometimes three broods during the summer. The ground robin is a cheerful chap, despite his sober dress, and no weather seems too wet or too windy for him to venture forth. On days when all the other birds sit disconsolately huddled under leafy shelter, the towhees may be seen, happy as larks, cheerily flitting about, stopping now and then to give their brown feathersa shake. The American robin (Merula migratoria) is unusually numerous hereabouts this spring. They slways sing during the rainy weather, and the air has been melo- dious with their notes during the past Wweek. The fogs, too, have begun their annual epithalamium—a not unpleasant sonnd at a little distance, and I heard a house wren singing yesterday, though I could not get sight of the little fellow. Across the furrows of the plowed field below me a thousand spider-webs gleam, diamond-studded by drops of moisture, as though a jeweled canopy had been spread for some feiry fete. Itis wonder ful how these gossamer webs withstand- the rain. The larks make sad réhts in them now as they brush- through its lacy meshes, stopping every now and then to bring some lacemaker’s work to an untimely end. The keen fragrance ot the upturned ear‘h, soaked in the soft, large February rains, assails the nostrils pleasantly. There is a hush and a mys- tery over the bare brown fields, where the seeds of the coming crop lie, passing stilly from death unto life. Mother Earth it is indeed at this time, guaraing her in the brooding, nourishing warmth of the eternal feminine. To be afield in February is to come very near to the heart of things, and the expe- rience is wholesome and refreshing. Qur little brown neighbors out in the Pacific Ocean have days of the year set apart when the whole population goes out to see the fruit trees abloom. This is a cus- tom we would do well to imitate, but bet- ter yet for us, if we ever arrive at the full- ness of seeing that which will send us to Mother Nature in her earliest time of promise, ‘‘to make our souls,” and learn of nor in the blessed seedtime season. ApeLINE KNarPe. i | prospects as | present with his company on the | of force in that scrimmage; his books and | President smirkingly accepted the resig- Some of Them Distinguish Themselves in Avenues and Lines That Are Alien to Their| l But happy may be those artisans of mind who can enjoy the gentleambling of | their hobbies and yet experience the rise | of no thoughts bringing them into con- flict with the uses or existence of the ser- vice. It was not so with | Lieutenant | HOBBIES OF UNGLE SAMS MARTIAL SONS WHO GUARD THE GOLDEN GATE ! letics of tHe Presidio under the direction of iwo gentlemen with such taste for sport and skill therein as have Lieuten- ants Croxton and Noian it may be ex- pected the games of this post will, be brought up to a high grade of excellence. “But after all,” remarked Lieutenant Reynold Landis, aid-de-camp of Gen- eral Green, ‘“‘the day of the hobby in the arn is about done. The introduction into the service of mnew sciences and the development and ex- tension of old ones, together with intri- AS HAMLET’S GHOST, CAPTAIN BUTLER PRICE IS IMMENSE. Joseph R. Binns of the First Infantry. He went into political economy, and im- mediately he became submerged in deep water. In that study, instead of serene charm the eyes of his brother officers from the saddles of their several steeds, he saw everything awry; civilization trending backward into the beast; the country going to the dogs; the army to be made the instrument to oppress the masses under the rough-shod heel of | tyranny. Lieutenant Binns consulted his conscience; he would not lend his efforts t6 subvert buman liberty; the | Sacramento riots had shown bhim how the thing was going; he was side theories had shaped the condition in his mind, the instance of the riots but fitied | the condition as he perceived it. The nation which the lieutenant tendered, | and the only political economist which the army had ever known, in sullen re- fusal, in statuesque pose of patriotism, had cut the service. But brain alone has not claimed a!l the hobby riders among the officers of the army. Brawn as well as brain is not without its distinguished representatives. | Second Lieutenant Nolan, First Infantry, now at the Presidio, had a long record as | a football player at West Point, and i | the game which was played here recently | with the Olympics he surprised the na- | tives with his aggressive punting of the pigskin. It was he who maneuvered on the left when a military picked eleven re- | cently played the Berkeleyites. Lieutenant R. C. Croxton, also of the Presidio, doesnot himseli very actively ex- ercise as an athlete, but heissageand wily as an athletic manager. He knows ail about the handling of athletic exhibitions, is familiar with the methods of manage-s, | with the terms, the tricks and favors, is eminentin such business. At Benicia he | lately engineered the first fistic encounter | between soidiers which has ever taken | place in the army. It was pitched in a | twenty-four-foot ring and it was a four- round affair. In that bout Peters of Com- | cate and enormously expensive machinery, bas so increased and is increasing the labors of the officers that they will shortly find+a demand by their duties for all of their time, and they will then have to refrain from indulging their crotchets ex- cept they choose to do so at mght, and then most men, tired wieh their day’s toil, will prefer a good pipe, an agreeable book or newsy paper, to muddling tneir Lieutenant Croxton, Athletic Manager. minds over some involved problem fof science or some delicate touch of art.” JorN E. BENNETT. Kindly but Pompous. General Jobn Meredith Read, who died the 27th in Paris, was a kindly man, although his pomposity was gigantic and he might well have adorned Thack- eray’s gallery of snobs. When he lived in Albany, he gave a reception to Professor Goldwin Smith. Tue late Paul Cooper, a pany B worsted Ramsey of Company C in | son of the novelist, was present and was o 7’/ In » BN - M 2T CAPTAIN ROGERS, BOOK-LOVER AND GEOLOGIST. the third round. It was a mill which would have done good the heartof Captain Cuarles D. Collins, in charge of small arms practics, now of Denver, late of Los Angeles, where he was on the staff at the | Goldwin Smith. headquarters of the Department of Ari- zona. The captain is handy with the stuffed | gloves and nimble and spry upon his | pins. He punches the bag daily and is | always ready for a round with any man of his class, of which, unfortunately or otherwise, there are very tew. It has| been the policy of the service to encourage athletic exercises among the men for the bexnefit it affordsin the development of their muscles and of their physical strength as soldiers, and with the ath- asked late in the evening to take one more glass of a pecuiiarly agreeable punch. *No,” said Squire Cooper, ‘I think I have had encugh. Iam beginning to admire If I took another glass Iam airaid I shouid like Meredith Read.” It was General Read who provoked an excruciatingly funny editorial article by Alden in the New York Times, in which Read’s servant announced that several kings were downstairs waiting for hu Do they bring letters of introduction?’ was Read’s reply. Yet in spite of his whims and foibles and preposterous vanity, he was a man of some ability, and he did many generous deeds.—Boston Journal. 800 pairs registered black iadies’ double knee, heel and toe hose, ?5¢ a pair, at City of Paris. .