The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 17, 1898, Page 22

22 THE SAN FRANOCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, APRIL 17, 1898 Before Herkomer Could Move or Remonstrate: Further There Was a Flash of a White Arm, a Rustle of the Soft Folds of Minora's Muslin Dress, and He Sprang to His Feet to See the Cobra Being Held at Arm’s Length. HE lights from the Gymkhana club were stream- moving he would only i ing ac Halpin road, and the drone of the band W lh_lhf’ F-’gm'l' came lazily across the open, filtering itself through Lo her seaf and gent the octopus limbs of the lakeof roses with which pro That was the professor’s hobby—roses, That ~MOVIng his lips. “Stand back and wait till' he goes - ikes—on snakes were real busir . But the chant continued, and there were the inter- the e for ple But both tnrived ec Y Jjected two English words “keep still! land lay jacqueminot and the capello. Before Herkomer could move or remonstrate further As he se, this land where the roses grew even there was the flash of a white a € stie of the soft ! , and the hooded devils came up out of the 'S muslin dr ind he sprang to his feet croff e bty et NoERE being held at arm's length, firmly which streamed ou \d tle to 1t wed the sudden pali was not more white t “Do not move lips_even, if you v Herkomer looked s 2irl, and they ror than even b perfectly s sh from the drawing room, the 'do not move your :ht into the great, strong eves > of the danger, more continued, d filled the com- and over the cobr My God, keep bac au in front y his Gymkhana, Parian marble and calling to Minora t clear, and holding him t from which he had e ro} - A re cou ‘and do not sinuous movement slender hter's voice In an instant the professor had the cobra by the tail, 1 from, and gave way to a flood of rs. term may be applied to women's br nerease the danger to both. Minora had risen ly swa her pody as the soft rose and fell, glided toward the and that w !” Herkomer groaned, scarcely fingers c¢ e up to its ugly have king to be relieved of o let go quickly, he sw hus ped. ction, the brave girl sank into 1g him carried him pack to the box 1d only be one reward for such ve ostensil the disco “All d—n rot! as his game, and I have beaten clean out of his boot: It v devoted, like Minor: write carryving him so ntly aions. n, my boy, gall by Jove, he thought o talk with you, old man,”” he said. he; mplaints indigenous to that land. 1id Herkomer thoughtfully, “I woke up about 3 o'clock in the morning, as near as I can judge, with a peculiar tingling sensation through every mnerve 3urmah s though some poison were cours ; in a chair beside my bed we did not move. “‘pegeit s father, the professor, to y of an antidote to the virus of the cobra said Herkomer to the little iron gray “Minora’s beaten him and he chuckled to him- the bally row both the count and sor would kick up when they learned how the jogged home from parade next morning, Herko-" brought his pony up alongside of Surgeon Thorny- “Come over and have breakfast with me. I want to s the figure to it, thinking that the bearer had fallen I got up and struck a ndle which stood on the table; 1 dis- with me in was out of the question; besldes, the Jodged a bottle in my fumbling about for a m:l_((h : a cobra!” the lips whispered. “Do not mov had worked sad havoc with Herkomer and it rolled off king the cement floor and exploding From the direction of Minora’s eves Herkomer knew it of the cobra. with a report like a gun. that the hooded demon was on the high back of his chair. “Love made her I mused the major, as his “Still the fizure did not move. It must be the bearer, it was the light of inspiration which came into Burma pony rattled him over the metallic road of the I thought, only a bearer could sleep through such a jolly the tves of this steen irl she broke into a low Cantonment late that night: “but she's a well-bred one r Italian chant, back and fort Herkomer movements. ( forehead—not i but be and eat beac his own proxir and attention viper to herself. deuced glad that the cob She's g to hypnotize the beast,” he thought. He poking h knew she could do it, too: the face told him that. It him the opportunity to seemed cowardly to sit there and allow a woman to face the and he had won the snake, but her cc been as much entreat amand to k commar cobl cours weaving her slender arms back and forth, 1d feel that the cobra was following her vas running in drawing the p perfectly still had nd he felt that by any way, and blood will and never flinched, with then he thought of the swept over the sweet of the love that had be th AP With Jesuitica d out on his to the hated e Minor s before father’s great friend, Cot Count Rubitino was a ace ugly head into their tete tell. God! how she stoo: that devil in her 1 soft mai as he tal 1 precipitated matters by atek It had given risk it all on a single throw of —won with the other fellow, her it Rubitino, a bad second. dilettante, an amateur scientist, to m “One of the fellows who had t: and lost number notice of his friend’ “Liver and sun both, t do you suppc ned o until hi t close into the § st till his troubled, qu irgeon fingers s th of his m ' answ Kn¢ rm! ow. “When I turned the light of the candle on the face : : T saw, Thornyeroft?” ioning ce, ana ne med eating ried long at the gym, ) vered the other s off the end of his cheroot. mtinued the major, taking no “dead, and a cobra clinging sighed Thornycroft mentally. “Of course, youwll call it a dream,” added Herkomer, “but this morning the soda bottie was in fragments on the floor, the candle had been lighted, and the sole oE my foot was bleeding where 1 had stepped on a piece of the broken glass: besides, I know 1 was awake. Now, what do you make of that?” he asked triumphantly. “What do vou make of it?” queried the surgeon, as he hunted about for his helmet, “‘make nothing of it; only don't let it occur again, and as preventive is bet- ter than cure in this country, take a run up to Dar- jeeling; it may save you the expense of a trip home. There is a litile angel sits up above, in these days of robbery by ruinous exchange, who sends us these warn- ings, with a postscript added, ‘Look to your liver. e next time your chum comes take him up to Dar- jeéling, and let the mountain winds carpet-beat the Jjungle fever out of hi “No, I'm quite well,” said Herkomer; “quite well, and that's the deuce of it,” he added plaintively; “'I can’t make When a man is well and sees things it's—it's the 8 B devil.” Often after that Herkomer had company of the same always the same, sitting there in the chair waiting. at the thunder is it waiting for?” Herkomer used to ask himself. Only he did not bother his friend any more about it—it was no use. Physically he was all right. He could put the best man in the regiment on his back; aye, and hold him there, too, for ten seconds, with both points of_ the shoulders touching the ground. Neither did ne go to Dar- [eeltns, Ho was in a bhappier place, ana climbed into ieaven, otherwise known as the haunts of Minora Conti. Not but what the hot chinook winds which blow up from hades sometimes withered and scorched his paradise. It was Count Rubitino who always started these blasts. He and Minora were unnecessarily too much together, it seemed to Herkomer, but then he was jealous, and consequently no judge of such matters. As often as Minora assured him that she cared noth- ing for the count he believed her, and as often as he stumbled upon them in close communion over some secret matter did he feel the hot winds blow, and vow that he would break away from his bondage and leave her to the count. But it always ended the same way. It wasn’t what Minora said that put things right, it was the eyes—the great, soft Italian eyes looking straight and truthfully at and through him, bowling over his jealous resolves like tenpins and bringing him back into leash, like a whipped beagle. And still it sat there, almost nightly now, beside his bed. He had grown accustomed to seeing it. What was it waiting . for? Sometimes it annoyed him: he felt like getting out of bed and kicking it; but the idea was so incongruous, this kicking of himself, this spiritual self, as it were, so he gave it up and sighed resignedly. “Of course it means something,” he mused; ‘“‘some- thing’s going to happen, but I'm not going to make an ass of myself by talking about it at the mess.” So he sat tight and waited for the thing to happen as he would have waited for a Ghazi rush. 3 Tt was grewsome, but much in India is grewsome, so he had learned to take things of that order much as he took fighting—with his coffee. A far greater puzzle to him was Minora herself. Sometimes he found her listless, indifferent, and then again for a time she uld be her old brilliant self. Thinking perhaps that these fits of dejection were due to oppression from her father, or undue influence brought to bear by the count, he made bold to question her, but she shrank from him with horror, and seemed more agitated than she had been when holding the cobra. nerves, he thought. Life with the musty old pro- r and his cobra -associates is depressing enough to vreck the nerves of a bronze Buddha. I'll nave to get her out of this. So he rushedmatters a little,and it was all settled for Christmas week. The professor gave his consent reluct- antly enough, Herkomer thought, and the count congrat- ulated him with an ironical sneer that made Herkomer long to give him a toss in tne air from which he would alight on the top of his curly black head. ‘When he and common sense sat face to face, common sense told him that Minora loved him with all the strength of her high-strung nature. What else is there in it for her, or's’ inheritance was ord might cut down from the pagoda ym account. / ense put it, but the-other, alias he masqueraded under. omething behind it all, and for once in a there right enough, and also something else behind it, and this something else might have all come out one evening if Herkomer had not been so Cooley-headed; honorable he called it at the time. : oo At ety A and the i The prelim of the talk was an account of what common seriSe argued, for the ma O e T R e T he ¢ tepping back, as Herkomer had happened . before over the advent of the jimited to whot Bl N otiehthe i L A L ed toward her with evident intention of taking the thing with the spec for he and Thornyeroft Were tree, with the exteption of a_trifling allowance, barely b - hich MIRoE fat tomtom has just driven up to the door— even as Damon and Pythias in the olden time. large enough to settle his monthly Ao D will take the cobra—it is of his patien “Now for the sequel, my boy,” he said, as he drew IThi+iia a8 the Wi comson of the professor. She was still holding the repul and then I want you to intuition, or whatever other > Nat Thue, would win onSti a8 the professor r . said there was ing, when Btoppal. S Aok T beater tokeome s > spicious professional 100k over way they were both right. one does when a 10-foot He stopped short when h ed the grewsome fri 's exterior, rching for The love w maw under the forefeet tabl him, stopp hort until startled into °F It lacked two weéks of Christmas time, and they were sitting on the veranda, as they had sat that ng through other evening. Minora, putting her cool white hand on Herkomer's w hadow st and turning her face a little into the that he did not notice-how set and white it § : “I have a confession to make, Rolando!" Don’t make !t then, little woman. Confe: silly things for which we are always sorry for afterward.” “But I shall be happier if you let me tell you about this. I can’t marry yvou without telling you first. I won’t—"" Look here, Minora,” said the major, turning her around so that he could look into her face, “my objection ion is purely selfish. You see, I couldn’t let you confs all on your side, without unloading some of my sins into 3 and if we exchanged experiences 1, well, 1 fancy the count would appear such a saint comparison that I should lose you altogether. By the I'll compromise,” he added, laughingly. “I'll just on, which you may answer or not, and n we'll call the whole thing off. “I will answer,” she said quietly, *“Well, has it anything to do with were_going to tell me?” “NO.Z ’ “Then I can't possibly listen.” And so the chance went by, the evil went on—went on rlnr two weeks longer, and it was the eve of the wedding day. “‘only—only—"" the count, what you Love does many strange things, among others causes a pony to gallop %0 fast that a syce cannot possibly keep pace with the winged rider. That was why Herkomer arrived at Minora's home sycéless. As there was nobody o hold his pony, he led him around behind the bungalow to the stables. “Minora’s rooms were in the north wing-of the bunga- low, and as he passed the great windows opening on to the veranda and reaching from ceiling to floor, and open save for the shutters, voices that he could not help but hear fell upon his ear. For an instant he stood petrified. It was the count’'s voice, speaking to Minora. “You will wreck your happiness for a rancy,” the voice. Herkomer_quickened his pace, so that he might hear no more, and-of her answer, whatever it was, he only caught the one word “confession,” as he turned the corner of the bungalew. But all the flerce jealous passion that had slumbered inhis heart fof weeks arose and smothered him—smothered everything—all sense of shame, of justice, of prudence, and he rushed into Minora’s boudoir a_passton-mad man. What right had she, who was to become his wife the next day, to hold secret intercourse with the count there in her own apartments? With a startled cry Minora thrust something into the drawer of a secretaire beside which she was standing, and 5tood with her back to it as though she would guard the “Perhaps I am de trop,” bevond the purdah with a thought “Wh sneered remarked the count, passing low bow, and as Herkomer a sneer on his pale face. i —wby have you rushed in here, Rolando, and frightened me?” asked Minora confusedly ““I am sorry if I have frightened you," satd the major shortly, “and’I will answer your question by asking an- other, for perhaps your answer will suffice for both ques- tions. What have you got in that drawer?” If Minora had not gone white with guilty fear it might have been all right yvet: but it was the faltering which developed the tiger in the man. He took a quick step for- ward and grasped her wrist cruelly—harshly, as he fairly it out, “You have a letter or something from him there ¥ God!" she moaned; “back, do not touch it. If you touch that drawer I will never marry you—never.” With an exclamation or rage he brushed her to one side, and snatching the drawer open, plunged his hand In. There was the lightning swish of a dark body, like the coil of a wniplash in motion; an electric shooting of pain through his arm which brought an involuntary cry of anguish from his lips, and the twisting, writhing of the hideous cobra-body as he snatched his hand from the death trap. A plercing scream had rung out on the still night air as he pulled the drawer open, for, powerless to stop him, Minora had foreseen that he was driving to his death. It was the scream that brought the professor to the room. “Quick, father, Rolando is bitten,” and before the major knew what he was about, the professor had grasped his wrist as in a vise and pulled him into his own room, which was next. From that on it was a head and head finish, with the professor and death as the runners. There were ligatures and lancing#and the injection of the professor’s antidote and the ceaseless marching up and down of the patient between two sturdy durwans, and the watcning of a woman with a great sore heart and eyes that were too dry and hot for tears. And the other, the one that had sat night after night by Herkomer’s bed, came and sat there just in the center of the veranda. Herkomer would not let the durwans move the chair. “Don’t disturb him,” he said; “let him sit there.” ‘‘Huzoor, it is but an “No one sits there, sahib. But still he told them not to move the chair—the; walk around it. ‘“He won’t have long to wait now empty chair,” said one of them. ould ‘Surely the poison was making the sahib a little mad,” the durwan thought. At first Herkomer felt strangely elated. It was like new wine—he was drunk on it; it was good to be bitten by cobr; If he could only get over it he would like to try it again—it was like opium. And then came the poppy sleep. him lie down and rest. “If you sleep you die,” the professor yelled in The voice was far off, it was like a dream, it He begged them to let murmuring of the breakers far away on the and required too. much energy to listen to i was so tired and sleepy. down was like counting : ss walking up heep, it made his head he and Up and down, up and down, the hara floor of the veranda, re-echoing to the clap, clap of the wans' logse:slippers as they marched one on ei ide of him. ®1t was a terrible race, and life the But as the torturing hours chased the others through the long Burmese night and the gray steal up behind the tapering spire of the golden pageda in the sas and the major s walke between his'relays of Punjabis, the he had won—hdd robbed the hooded And the man who had come back out of death, when he was told that he might down into the rest world and lay for hou: was first cousin to death. vhen he awoke the figure sittin had changed—it was Minors: she who has after hour watching that the light did not that the sleep did not come of cioser kin Very confusedly the questioning when they opencd. "hen he had grown a little stronger she told him this told him the tale that she ha 3 3 c| when he had stopped her, . >0 tried to tell that night “Father inoculated me with the an experiment. and partly for my cobras were always about. As it seemed to be harmless, and to make it sure, he performed the operation several times. But he, learned as he fs, did not foresee the result. It acted on me like morphine acts on those who have it iniected into their veins—it became necessary to my life. The exhilaration you felt would be mine for days, then depression followed as a natural law. “But why go into detail?"” she added, with a faint, wan smile, “without it I was dead. At last I became so that the bite from the cobra was only equal to the dose my father used. This was the simplest plan. “When you first came into my life I thought that I should overcome it, for love is blind “The night you were bitten I meant to tell you all, but to fortify myself, to summon up the moral courage to e his couch t there hc £0 quite ou to aeath. eyes looked at her cobra virus, partly as own safety,. as his drown the love which was so great and strung I had asked Count Rubitine to bring a cobra from my father's box. ““Th: all; it is not pleasant,” and she smiled again should not have allowed this love to conquer me, but now it has conquered, it has triumphed over all. I will not marry you because I love you.” It was the best that way: ‘“Because I love you I will not man you.”" ‘W. A. FRAZER. Zopyright, by S. S. McClure Co. LR R RO R OR RO aR R R RRORCRORCROROR. RO R R RCRORCR AR AR AR AR R 23 & & @ @ © ® © @ PS ° @ % Here is the story of our new bullet that is being used in the new f @ army rifle. It is small of size, but its execution is remarkable. It will & % Kill at two miles, and its power of penetration places it far ahead of its & leaden predece The proofs are accurate, for the experiments were & made on cadavers and were conducted by experienced army officers. s @ ® PPOO0OO0OOOGS ® VER since the modern small arm | point. was invented military authorities have been discussing the effects of its small, hardened bullet, pro- pelled at immense speed, upon the human body. It was easy enough to discover that at ten yards it would go clear through two feet of geasoned white oak; at 200 yards through 31 feet of poplar or 0.2 inches of steel or 0.3 inches of wrought iron; at 2000 yards through four inches of deal plank, and at miles) that it would still ve sufficient force to s through a man! All this was easy, but how to find out its effect upon the human body was quite a dif- ferent and a very much more difficult matter. It seemed that it might be necessary to await a great war between nations equipped with the modern small arm before this could be fully determined. Much was expected from the war which recently agitated Chile. The insur- gents, who proved the victorious party, were partially armed with the Mann- A tackle fastened to the roof of the gallery held the cadaver and permitted its easy movement. A good marksman then fired upon the desired portion of the body—for instance, the upper bone of the arm. The bullets, after passing through the body, were stopped by sawdust in barrels, placed directly in rear. After the firing was finished the bul- lets were dug out and the effects of the passage through the cadaver upon them were noted, as.well as the effects of the bullets upon the body. On the base of the bullets numbers were im- pressed, which corresponded with the | shot fired, so that it was easy to iden- licher—one of the best of the recent| small arms, Some of our naval sur- geons went upon the flelds of battle to treat the wounded and discovered the effects of the bullets of the Mannlicher upon the wounded. The results seemed so much at vari- #hce that finally it was decided by our Chief of Ordnance to order a series of experiments and find out exactly what might be expected from these small and hardened bullets. At his request Dr. La Garde, of the United States arm Frankford Arsenal to direct these ex- periments. Lieutenant Benet, of the Ordnance Corps, was detailed tp assist him in this important and difficult work. The report of their extenslve experiments has just been issued and is very interesting. The experiments were made in a shooting gallery with reduced charges of powder. Lieutenant Benet accur- ately figured out the charge of powder necessary to give the same velocity at fifty-three feet as a full charge would give at 6000, 4500, 3600, 2400, 1500, 1050, 75 and 300 feet. A cadaver was placed fifty-three feet in front of the firing was, some time ago, sent to the | tify the bullet which made each wouna. The sawdust would not deform the bullets, hence any change in their form was due entirely to the passage through the human body. It was necessary to use the limited range of fifty-three feet, because the shooting had to be accurate. Dr. La Garde wished to note the effect of these bullets upon nearly all the bones and many of the tissues of the body. It takes a very good marksman to hit a man_at 3000 feet. and it would take a much better one to hit a man at that distance in the exact spot he wished— for instance, in the leg. As the supply of cadavers was limited, it was impos- sible to get up a row of them at a dis- tance of a mile or so, to be hit by chance shots in any part. Hence a distance of fifty-three feet was select- ed and the charges of powder reduced as before stated, to give the bullets the same velocity they would have had at the actual distances simulated. The bullets used were the old style .45-inch, soft lead Springfield and the new style .30-inch, hardened lead with a coating of German silver. Two small caliber rifles were made especially for use in these experiments. The details of the wounds made in the firings and the effects upon the bullets were verv minutely reported by Dr. La Garde. The more important of these will, perhaps, interest the gen- eral reader, who, no doubt, has read many conflicting articles upon the ef- fects of small caliber bullets.\ The i1~ lustrations are from photographs taken by Dr. La Garde. It is well known that at different dis- tances from the muzzle of a gun the effects from bullets fired from it are not at all the same. These different distances are grouped together into “zones,” each zone containing all dis- tances where the effects from the bul- -lets are practically the same. The first of these is the zone of explosive effect. Dr. La Garde reports that the wounds within this zone are of a pecu- and terrible nature. The orifice of entrance is small, but sometimes rag- ged, and the opening where the bullet leaves the body is wide and jagged, with muscular shreds hanging to it. The channel left by the bullet is coni- cal, and its sides a as if something had burst within them. If a bone is struck in this zone then | the wound is much more terrible and its exit frightful in size and appear- | ance. At times from such | fragments of bone a a wound | ed thirty to forty fee b e o e ve s s e HowitE N OE awful explosive ef- fect extends, as determined by Dr. La Garde, from the muzzle of the gun to a distance of 350 yards in the case of with the large .45-inch bullet. How ever, this explosive effect did not occur when the small bullet struck only the case it made a clear cut hole through the cadaver. The small bullet beyond 350 yards did not shatter a bone so much as the soft, large bullet. If the small bullet was not turning end on it generally per- forated the bones with little or no splintering. It goes so fast and turns so rapidly that it, as it were, punches a hole through the muscle or bone, whichever it may strike. This zone is Jacketed projectile possessed of the torn and crushed, | d tissue are hurl- | the small bullet and only to 250 yards | muscular parts of the body, in which | one of perforation, and the wounds in it are not as severe as in the first zone |and the zone of contusion. The alta zone in the small bullets | extends from a distance of two thou- | sand to three thousand yards. In this zone bullets have lost their force and have a tendency to bruise rather than | penetrate. The smaller bullets, of course, penetrate further than the large, soft ones. ometimes the small and long bullets, if turning end on, merely bruise the flesh and penetrate f »ugh to remain in the flesh. e experiments refuted the idea quite common in Kurope that wounds from the new bullets are terrible as compared with the old, large bullets. In fact, it was shown that a hardened bullet of small caliber should, on hu- | manitarian grounds, be adopted. If the | bullet is hardened, but has no tensile strength, then the wounds when bones are struck will be terrible, since such bullet would break up and each sep- arate piece become a projectile. Some experiments made abroad were with such bullets and upon horses, whose bones are very hard. In consequencs, the results were often appalling and misleading. It has been a mooted question whether a man struck in a fleshy part of the body by a small bullet would be disabled. When a bone is struck, either BONES SHATTERED BY NEW STYLE BULLETS. Gunshot injury, lower third, right femur, by the 30-caliber German-silver velocity usual at 2000 yards. COMPARATIVE PENETRATION ‘OF NEW AND OLD STYLE BULLETS. I Showing how the new style bullet has an infinitely superior penetrative power. with a large or small bullet. the man is, of course, disabled but with flesh wounds the result is doubtful. There is no question that the small caliber bullet will not so effectually stop a body as the old-fashioned large bullet. In the Dahomey war the small bullets of the French, striking the natives in almost vital spots, often did not stop them in their wild onward rush. In the English service two men were accidentally shot with small bullets. One man a mile and a third from the firing point was hit in the fleshy part of the thigh. He did not fall nor did -| he realize that he was seriously in- Jjured. The second man was but one hundred yards from the gun, the bul- let passing through the thigh clear of the bone. He did not fall and did not suffer much of a shock. In either case the result would have been very seri- ous with the large lead bullet, the shock from which would surely have knocked the men down. Now, if these bullets will not stop men, much less will they stop horses when in a charge. In order to have them do this various means have been proposed, such as having a point not covered by the hard jacket, then when the bullet strikes it will spread out in a sort of mushroom shape and produce a wound terrible enough to stop man or beast. On the score of humanity, the small, hard, undeformable bullst is greatly superior to all others, but if it will not stop a man in his runs forward or a horse in the wild gallop of the charge this bullet will have to be modified, for war at its best is a terrible thing, and in no sense is it humane. Certain things are not permitted in modern jwar, as for instance, the poisoning of ‘jdrinking water or the using of chain- ed cannon balls. These would make the rigors of war too severe, and, if at- tempted to-day, all civilization would man when hit in a fleshy part of the | rise up in horror and suppress the of- fender. But the main object of a battle is to permanently disable as many of the enemy as possible, and if one of the modern bullets will not do this in its present form, then, in spite of the cries | of all the humanitarians, it will be so | changed that upon striking a man in a serious part that man will be rendered hors du combat a® least during the re- mainder of that battle. A number of inventors have lately claimed to have made coats of some unknown materials which will effectu- ally protect the wearer from all dis- agreeable effects when hit by one of these small bullets. There is no doubt that such a garment would prove ex- | tremely satisfactory if it would do what its owners claim for it. However, when it is remembered that one of these bul- lets will cut a clean hole through a piece of .2-inch steel the claims of these | men seem absurd. A garment to resist successfully | ‘would, of whatever material construct- ed, be too heavy and cumbersome to wear in the field. In the future, as in | the past, a good pile of dirt will be the | best and most easily obtained protec- tion. In the late civil war the soldiers at first thought a man a coward who would get behind a tree or dig a hole in | the ground for shelter, but now all is changed and soldiers are taught to take advantage of everything that will give the slightest protection. | By considering the results of Dr. La Garde's experiments the reader must conclude that such instruction is much more essential than to teach soldiers| the niceties of drill upon the drill | grounds. It is also apparent that the man who wields such a weapon as our modern smallarm is much more important than he who was armed with the battle-ax or | flintlock of qur forefathers. Conan Doyle truly says that we stand or fall by the man who holds the gun. For the colonel rides before, The major on the flank. The captains and the adjutants Are in the foremost rank. But when it's “Action front!” And fighting’s to be done, Come one, come all, you stand or faly By the man that holds the gun, No country has better material to put behind its guns than the United States So long as this is true its future is as- sured, no matter whether war comes scon or late. NO MAP OF THE U TED STATES, “The school children of the Be know nothing of American hlr,s-'xr:;?»a:s- says a New York woman who has just returned from Hamilton. “One day [ stopped and talked with a_bright little colored boy on the street. The Bermuda, negro, you know, is superior in intelli- gence to the Southern negro of this country. He has neither -the thick lips nor the flat nose of our American negro, His superiority is accounted for by the fact that he has in his veins the blooq of the Indians captured in King Philip's war and taken as slaves to the Ber- mudas. ‘Do you go to school?” I asked the Yes'm.” ““Who ow it ‘England. Vho rules England? ‘Queen Victoria.” " ‘Where are the United States? ioudth]nt Canada.” * ‘And do you know who is the = dentyof the (I},'nlled States? e nes'm; George Washington.’ ‘When I had visited one of the little schools at Hamilton 1 did not wonder that Washington was the only Ameri- can President the boy had heard of. On the walls were maps of every important country in the world but our own, and I found that the teachers said as little of the United Stat ~ g New Yoric sun, - 22 they. could. 5, S these islands?" g