The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 16, 1899, Page 25

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JULY 16, 1899. 25 MARR .90900000000 Qo000000000000000000009000oOQO@O@O@OQOOOOOOOQOOOOO00000000000000003 : A WOMAN WHO HAS LIVED YEARS IN § ¢ DAYS, LIFETITIES IN I'MONTHS, AND HAS 2 RUN THF ENTIRE GAMUT OF HUMAN $ : EXPERIENCES KNOWN IN WORLDLY LIFE. § O.;_NNOQOQOQoooooeoooooeoooec@oso@oeo@oeoooeoooeo@oeo&ooceo@o@oeo@ooooooaoooo@% LEMENTE RUIZ of Santa Barbara s one of the most fascinating of women. She is also one of the most cant proof? It lles in this She has been from thirteen st three years. emente was a of other children, and a thin and serable adobe hut s Spanishtown. is & woman who has lived nd lifetimes in months—a ing the time when girls of less 10us blood (emotions) are shyly beginning to read the first sweet se- cret of their maiden hearts, has run the entire gamut of human experiences; a woman to whom love and hate are not burned out fires and for whom there re- mains nothing in this world, either of good or evil That she is beautiful goes without say- ing, since nothing but personal beauty of the most voluptuous type could so attract nd make captive of every man upea whom the has chosen to smile. Gentle and simple, rich and poor, high end low—ell have surrendered to her mag- fcal charm. And she has chosen whom she would, moved by the fancy of the moment, and cast each aside in turn with = capricious heartlessness as character- istic of her as i{s her wonderful beauty. From the palaces of millionaires to the back rooms of a barber shop, from the racetrack hotel to the deck of a brigan- tine, from & mansion to the mean ranch uee of & humble farmer, she has wan- red as impulse swayed her. planned nothing, calculated nothing. Money has slipped through her slender hands lfke quicksilver, and she has been ‘wealthy or poverty stricken according te the environment of the time being. She —tan - knows no regrets and she fears no future 14, t Tolfskow of Bt. red for a time of Santa d eccentric, .ty people of of his time in sol Two-score his ly wh trunk of a glant e glossy rip- ght her—as ght her since— creature that earth sary excuse, m, he asked ent or two th and her a nt to g0 W te red that which was a mente's after expe- ed upon the ocean oung girl was at- mal de mer. She the Count as a m still less as a of wealth and , and the pros- an's darling” in 1 the jailer af- 11d ameled spir! ed since that she s a wo- s, but she began to prove f her husband's plead- nd case. She was not yet 17, and she was married to a man whom she hated. The result was swift and certain. She came back to the paternal home—trans- formed from & hut to a pretty cottage through the generosity of the deserted one—freed from her galling bonds, and with sufficient money forced upon her from the same source—for the old man truly loved her—to keep her in luxury for some little time to come. That she did not come back into the old life was, however, soon apparent. The child under the rosebush had disappeared forever. The girl had begun to know the value of the power of her beauty, and the romance of which she had been the heroine brought her the notice which her awakened vanity craved. Only & few weeks passed before another titled lover bent before her, a Frenchman e S i, her life's history and became the Bar- oness Beaudry. This second ridal trip took her as far as New York, nd she seemed happy and contented during all the long journey, but when the tickets were falrly bought for the trip across the ocean she asked for a stay of proceedings. She was quite sure, without thinking over the matter at all, that she should not like to travel upon the water; and she was also sure, after having done consider- able thinking at odd times on this sub- Ject, that she did not truly love the de- voted and gallant Baron. - mamaa he kindly excuse k that g conclu- rney with- . because he was even had she wished, for he was—b; time that she began to experience this, to her, novel emotion—far beyond the recapturing pow- er of tugboats or steam launches; but— there were others. T were several others, in fact, who merited consideration under the circum- stances, but they were further away than the amiable and self ificing Baron. Still they were more get-at-able, and there was a possibility that among them there might be one whom she would like better. The New Yorkers she did not like at all, though they stared at her in open admira- tion whenever she ventured to show he lovely face outside her own apartment. She longed for the roses and su she had unpacked back into a hurried muddle of wrin e cover d of her c n its curving apex the strain- turned the key In en she sent for her ticket, put on the ckest of veils to cheat the unappreci- New York men out of a farewell at her perfect features, and set HF is trouble on the water front over the shipping of sailors cep sea voyages, and the boarding house masters are strug- gling with the problem of how to respect the law and make a living me time. t a berth as steward y're want- ing?” said a fat old lady sitting outside her tumble-down establishment on the water front. Why she thought I would like to be & steward I do not know. Perhaps she real- ized 1 was not a genuine sailor, but only an amateur who had strayed into a dis- trict redolent of the sea. When I haa explained matters she poured forth hex grievances readily enough. “It's hard on us, and hard on the sallor, too, this new law,” she said. “Why they say a sailor isn’t to get more than a month’s advance when he ships, and with wages at $20 w dots that amount to? Why many a time & man comes to me, just as you might do, and asks to be taken in. He hasn't got a cent in his pocket, nor any clothes except those on his back. Now what am I to do? I can’t send the poor fellow away hungry. So I take him in and feed him up well and get him an outfit for sea—oilskins, sea boots, tobacco, matches and all sorts of things—so that he ships away happy and contented and blessing his benefactors.” All this was quite a revelation to me. 1 had never dreamed before that the sail- ors' boarding-house trade had its humani- tarian side. But the benevolent old lady explained how It s done. “Well, you see, perhaps we have to keep the man, if things are slack, five or six weeks before we can get him a ship. And the board, with vegetables and meat at their present prices, is cheap at 3. Then there’s the outfit, which will run away at this time, and with her usual sudden re- solve she turned over another page In with $10, and there’s the cash advanced and & dozen other things. So that you FOROED ¥ D HOROROXOUOKOH OXPH OO KO YDA PHOHOKOK DK EARTY JACK TAR % ORPADR DX OXOOXD forth, bound for the home she loved as much as she was capable of loving any- thing on earth. Her people were glad to welcome her, but more was John Wilbur, who, though n the Circean senorita y or twice before Baron Beaudry e of her mage in his arried her away from the uests, had borne her falr reart ever since. John Wilbur was the son of a Pennsyl- vanian oil magnate and heir to millions, so there could be no possible objection to his impassioned suit from a practical point of view even had the ex-Baroness- Countess been coldly mercenary, which she never was. He was, moreover, a per- sonable young fellow, educated, accom- plished and manly, and Clemente really felt something very near akin to love for him when she for his sake assumed for the third time the responsibilities of mat- rimony. For a few brief months the voung couple were reasonably happy together. young Wilbur found out, as most made husbands do, that he had a very human woman and not an angel, and Clemente discovered that Span ish temper and American temper are very much alike, save in name, and that sweet- hearts and wives stand on very different planes after the honeymoon is over. Things would have gone very comfortably with however, and because they fond of each other they would probat ave shot the ragpids of early marr ¢ and found smooth sailing in the calm waters of prosaic mat- rimonial content, had not the Wilbur fam- them, see we can’t afford to do it for less than $40, two months’ advance, and that’s what e always been getting.” Certainly, judging from the appearance of the establishment, the business is not a very profitable one. At least it does not run into gilding and ornamentation, mirrors and French paintings, as does the liquor trade. The house s a low, tumble- down wooden shanty on some street near the docks. It looks as if it had never known the meaning of a coating of fresh paint, and the dreary looking saloons which Infest the neighborhoed keep it fit- ting company. In the front room, which has that inde- scribable odor peculiar to a ship’s fore- castle, half a dozen men lounge on a rough wooden bench. They are weather beaten and stolid, roughly clad in any sort of old clothes. They do not talk much, but when they speak it is in short, jerky sentences. Their conversation is of the sea, but not of its romance. The moa- ern Jack knows nothing of the glory of the waters; he only realizes the hara- ships of the life. He talks of his last trip and of the fll-treatment meted out to him. Next voyage it will be just the same thing, but in the meantime Jack is con- tent to smoke his short pipe and walt patiently until the time comes for him to ship. For he is entirely in the hands of the boarding house keeper, and knows that he may at any moment be thrown penniless into the streets with no refuge to turn to. No other boarding house will take him in; there is & mutual un- derstanding between the keepers. So that the ®ailor must perforce accept the first ship offered, no matter whether she be good or bad; even If she be one of those ‘“hell” ships which leave behind them at each port a fresh record of bru- tality and bloodshed. For the present, at any rate, the sailor is fairly well treated and fed. In the PHORPROHPHOXOXOX: but even stald Philadelphians listen to gossip occasionally and disquieting r mors had come through other channels to the Wilbur home. So it was that the Wilbur family an- nounced austerely that they did not ap- prove of young Mrs. John. They did not care to mix their petroleum with Spanish blood anyway, but when the lady of John’s choice proved not only to be Span- ish but to have been the heroine of two other romances previous to her introduc- tion into their sacred circle she became simply impossible. Father and Mother Wilbur declined to receive her. They in- formed the youthful benedict of that fact and implored him to desert the girl ho had chosen and return to the bosom of his relations. As an incentive to obedi- ence they shut off his allowance. That plan, however, did not work for a time. John Wilbur was still charmed enough by his wife’s beauty tq contemplate with equanimity the prospect of love in a Spanishtown ’dobe if need be. Clemente, though, was different. She was not troubled much about the money part of the affair, but her spirlt rebelled at the attitude of her husband’'s people toward her; and then, besides, she was tiring of him a little’ A certain John Harper, son of W. W. Harper, the weal- thiest stockbroker in Cincinnati, had ap- peared upon the scene, and Clemente be- gan to think ruefully that she had been rather in a hurry, after all, in the Wilbur affair, and might have done better had she waited a little. The result of all this was that when a letter arrived offering the 17-year-old wife a handsome sum to eliminate herself from the Wilbur equation she viewed the proposition with favor. #OxOH THE SAILOR BOARDING- HOUSE AND DEIEP SEA VOYAGES. long, low dining room at the back the steward is spreading the table for sup- per. It is a simple enough process. There is no napery to bother with; the table is simply covered with oil cloth, a cup and saucer and plate {s dumped down opposite each place. Huge plles of bread and great joints of beef are placed at intervals, and all is ready. From the kitchen adjoining rises an odor of savory stew, and soon the men come trooping in take their seats on the long wooden benches. Chairs seem to be an unknown luxury in this part of the world. It s all very rough and primitive, but still not without a certain homely com- fort. To a sailor half starved for four or five months on hard tack and salt horse, the fare must seem positively luxurious, and it s no wonder he waxes fat and is loth to leave the shelter of his well- supplied boarding house. Yet, if the new Federal law is to be enforced Jack's stay ashore will be cut short by at least a half, while in many cases he will be gent to sea without an outfit at all and will be compelled to call upon the ship's slop chest and to pay any price which the skipper may choose to demand. The fact that he wil have more money com- ing to him at the end of the voyage will not help him much. The usual spree on landing may be slightly prolonged; that is all. In the end Jack will fall back penniless, just as he does now, upon the boarding-house keeper. The long and the short of it is that all these attempts to ameliorate the lot of the sailor by legislation are bound to prove futile. The shipping laws are made by representatives who know nothing whatever about the sea, and hence are more likely to do harm than good. Thus the new Federal law whieh came into effect last month, though on paper it looks an admirably designed enactment, is likely to defeat its own object. There is & most elaborate scale of provisions OROAOAOROAOROXO KO AND THENEW LAWY (ORDAORORDAOKOROAOXOXOROUDXIROXOROUOXOKOXOAOXOXOAOKOK £ OXOXOAOKORONOXOROADKOKOXOAO X OKOKOAOHOK O O ¥ O%O%OXOX0%0@ A few days after there was a romantic elopement. John Wilbur played the role of the prodigal son successfully and Mr. and Mrs. John Harper appeared in Cincinnati dazziing all beholders with the sight of youth, beauty and happiness set in a massive frame of glittering wealth. Clemente soon learned to spend money as energetically and industriously as her fourth husband, and between the two they managed to make quite a litttle dent in the family funds before Harper declded not to spend any more money at all. Clemente looked utterly enchanting in mourning, and so chastened was her spirit by her sudden bereavement that she even let her lovely eyes rest with tol- eration upon a resident of the State which she had formerly despised. Albert Rice was a young business man. His father was one of the senfor members of ‘the long established and Influential firm of Hunt, Rice & Almy of Albany, and he himself held a responsible and lucra- tive position in the house. He had all the assurance, dash and personal magnetism necessary to a successful business career, but he forgot business entirely when he met Clemente Ruiz Harper. Her beautiful face dawned on his mental horizon like the sun of morning. No music had ever sounded so sweet to him as the soft tones of her caressing voice and the dear litttle Spanish accent which made her speech so delightfully different from that of any other woman whom he Knew. 1f she looked like a hourl in garments of woe, how would she 100K in a garb of the delicately lovely tints which fashion de- crees for the gowning of idow brides? He had a mind to solve that proble if the fates would be kind. The grim sisters £ for the mariner, including everything from canned tomatoes to molasses and dried fruit. But only the simpleton im- agines tbat the crew, once the ship is well on the high seas, will get any of these luxuries. Many recent cases have shown how utterly futile it is for the sailor to appeal to our courts for redress, and practically, law or no law, he is at the mercy of the captain and officers, who may treat him well or ill, just as they choose. It is here that the striking dilfference between American and English sailing vessels is shown. Hardly a Yankee ship comes into port without complaint being made by the crew against the officers. We hear terrible tales of brutality and starvation, of hazing “bucko” mates and embalmed rations. The public has grown to accustomed to these horrors of the sea that no one pays them much attention, and our law courts never interfere. The result is that the name “hell” ship has become a reproach against our American deep water vessels. On the wtherghand, one rarely hears of trouble on boa# the English sailing ves- sels, which come in such numbers to this port. Yet both classes of ships are manned by exactly the same kind of crew. The American sailor has practically ceased to exist, and the men who now go to sea are a cosmopolitan lot, made up of sweep- ings from every race under the sun, from Dagos to Russian Finns. The English Board of Trade scale of provisions is less liberal than that ordered by the United States law, and the English forecastle is certainly less comfortable than on most American ships. Why then should there be such a difference? The reason lles, not in the law, but in the method of its enforcement. The Eng- lish captain or mate knows that he must respect the law, or else at the end of his voyage he will find a stern, unbending Consul ready to investigate any coms PROKOAPXPAOXPHOXOKOXOK O KO UOROKOXKOKOX S ¥ OXOXOXD ‘were gracious and Clemente, after a few short weeks of deepest gloom, came out into the sunshine again. She made, as usual, a charming bride, and Mr. Rice considered himself for some little time the happiest of men. Clements was not domestic, and he discovered after a little that she had other little idiosyn- crasies which he as a loving husband was bound to overlook. She was far from be- ing ignorant of the power of her beauty by this time, and her love of admiration had become a trifle too pronounced to be pleasant, even to a husband who adored her. She could not re giving a giance of her lovely eyes under their long black lashes, and a half-shy, half-alluring smile of her pomegranate s to any present- able man who was bold enough to take second look at her I spite of the Cerberus constantly at her side. Oddly enough, Al- bert Rice, knowing as he did that he was number five on his wife's list of persons whom she had sworn to love, honor and obey, could not reconcile himself to the idea that any one else should look at her with any save artistically abstract admir- ation now that she was his wife. Since he could not expect in the nature of things to be her Alpha, he wished to be her Omega. To tell the truth he was ut- P s e D terly, and, at first, unreasonably jealous, and Clemente soon began to rebel at his unkind suspicions and unremitting espion- age. There was enough of the undisecl- plined child about her still to make her desirous of doing exactly what she was ordered to leave out of her scheme of ex- istence, and it was not long before she began to flirt most abominably whenever opportunity offered. Then came quarrels, at first slight and easily made up, and then so severe as to cause not a little mild neighborhood gossip. And then one day voung Madame Rice packed her trunk again—this time neatly and deliberately— and went off on a western trip with only her maid for company, because, as she averred, she found the Eastern climate far too changeable and severe for her Cal- ifornia-bred constitution, and felt that she needed change of air and scene. Fancy apparently, but Fate most assur- edly, led her to exercise the privilege of her stop-over ticket in Austin, and there at the hotel table she became aware of an admiring gaze, even more earnest than those to which she was by this time ac- customed, and looking up met the boid eves of Will S. Hauk, the famous Texan stockman, plunging straight into her own. It was a case of love, or, rather, irre- sistible attraction on both sides this time, and a few days later Albert Rice was no- tified that he need never expect his wife to return to him, since she had found some one whom she liked far better and with whom she hoped to spend the re- mainder of her life in peace and hap- pines After her fifth husband gave up all claim to her the peace and happiness last- ed only a very few weeks. Hauk was used to dealing with cattle and cowboys, #o® @ % ® * < FS p ® plaints the sailors may choose to make. In fact, it does not pay to ill treat sailors on British ships; the consequences are too serious. Exactly the reverse applies on American vessels. Secure from punish- ment, the brutal mate may haze and drive as much as he will, the captain gives tacit approval, and justice, as represented by the law courts or Consuls, is conveniently blind. A leading boarding-house master, whom I asked for an opinion, surprised me, by saylng that nowadays American ships were run more cheaply than British. “Why,” he remarked, “for deep sea voy- ages they only pay thefsame rate of *wages, they spend far less In port and they do not feed the crew any better, if as well, as the Britishers. On the other hand, they get much more work out of the men. This {s the reason why there are so few American-born sailors to be found on our ships to-day. The occupa- tion is too hard and ill paid, and no young man of independence will choose it in preference to a shore life.” The new law, as I have explained, is not likely to help the sailor much. In- stead of allowing him to draw two months’ pay, or $0, in advance, it will limit him to one month’s pay. But the law does not fix the rate of remuneration, and here is the loophole for evasion. In New York they tried the plan of ralsing the wages to $30 a month; on this coast they propose to lower them to $15. That is to say, the sailor will only get $15 and the ship will pay the other $5 to the board- ing-house keeper. Thus, if the voyage lasts four months the sum advanced will come to $35, as very nearly the same as under the old system. Jack will neither be better nor worse off than before; the boarding-house and saloon will get his earnings, just as ever, and we will only have another object lesson of the useful- ness of this class of legislation. J. R. ROSE-SOLEY. ED THIRTEEN TIAES IN THREE YEARS. and knew little about women save in a general way—certainly he knew nothing about spoiled and domineering little beau- ties like Clemente Tolfskow-Beaudry-Wil- bur-Harper-Rice-Hauk. A stock ranch is not an over-pleasant place, and a man who has become meta- morphosed into a centaur and clanks about during all his working hours in Mexican spurs, with a big whip in his hand, his legs adorned with shaggy chap- arrajos, and a silver-trimmed sombrero glued to the top of his self-willed head, is not an altogether pleasing object to gaze at unremittingly. Clemente gazed for a time, interested by the novelty of it all; then she yawned, shook her small fist at the universe in general and—looked elsewhere. Al Truax, a notorious follower of the races and the heaviest player at Latonia, made his appearance at the golden mo- ment when those glorious dark eves for- got their wifely duty, and presto, change! Mr. Hauk was left to run his stock ranch alone without bothering over or caring for a wife who preferred to delegate that pleasant duty to a younger and hand- somer man. The race track life suited her for a while. She liked the noise and confusion and uncertainty of it, but her temper did not improve under ex-city conditions, and when she discovered that her husband was no more true-hearted than herself she made some unamiable remarks about vivisection and hied herself away to pas- tures new. To speak truly, she retired to a ranch in Southern California, where Charles Williams, the owner, made her queen of his whole extensive domain. Both she and Truax were equally anxious for a separation, so that episode was eas- 1ly closed. Ranch life was decidedly dull, however, after/the excitement of the race track; it was even duller than the stock farm had been, and so Mrs. Willilams after endur- ing it for a month or so developed a con- suming homesickness which nothing short of a visit to her childhood’s home could assuage. Once In Santa Barbara again her fancy lightly turned to thoughts of a certain sea captain who had patted her on the head in her bare-legged youth and ad- mired her from a distance in the years since then. After all, constancy is the one earthly jewel that time does not dim, decided she; and Mr. Willlams thoughtfully - ef- facing himself at this opportune period, she set sall on the barkentine of Cap- tain J. Ellis, and made him the envy of Eureka by allowing him to announce her i il ! as his bride on their arrival there. She had discovered on “her trip, how- ever, that seasickness was a decidedly unpleasing experience, and she was not by nature calculated to make a name for herself in the annals of martyrdom. For the moment she was pleased with the cli- mate and people of Fureka and elected to make her home there while the bold captain plowed the main back to his home port. The captain should have known better than to leave her to her own devices, but he didn’t. He went off trustfully, think- ing himself one of the luckiest of men to have won so fair a flower for his own and planning for the pretty little home he would build her as soon as he had made a voyage or two more. When he cams back to the northern city his ungrateful bird had flown and with her had gone Charles Emery, a jeweler of polished manners and a ready tongue. Being a philosopher in his own way, as seafaring men are apt to be, the captain hid his chagrin under a mask of indifference and bade the fugitives godspeed. Disaster followed them, however, and for the first time luxury loving Clemente experienced the inconveniences of lack of mone: S. Krump, a San Francisco mpathized with her in her quarreled with Emery, forced him to leave her and rewarded the drummer for his friendliness in her time of trouble by becoming Mrs. Krump. For three or four months the heroine of eleven matrimonial ventures rested quiet- ly under this far from euphonious appel- lation and then her soul rebelled. Her husband was at home very little anyway, and during his absence she had plenty of time to think over matters in general and her absent spouse in particu and she came very quietly and seriously to the conclusion that she—unfortunate that she was— had made another mistake. Mr. Krump agreed with her cheerfully when she presented this view of the case to him and agreed to release her from all obligations to him whenever she wished him to do so. She wished immediately, he fornd. and so back again she went to Santa Barbara. Her adventures and unsettled life and her illness had dimmed her beauty not a lit- tle and she found to her chagrin that she was not the idol that she had been only so short a time ago. She was still handsome enough to be unusually at- tractive, however, but her record was a trifle against her in the estimation of even the most enthusiastic of beauty wor- shipers. Charles Klett, a barber, at last sume- moned up courags enough e himself, and all went well until a man of Mrs. Klett's own nationality began to make love to Ler in true Span style, which was a welcome novelty to her even after her many varied experiences in the gentle art of ccurtship. Klett, being an unobtrusive and mild-mannered man, did not argue the matter. Clemente was no help in the barber shop any way, and she was inclined to flirt with the customers. If Charles Coto wanted to marry her he was quite welcome, so far as he was concerned, provided there was no unpleas- ant notoriety about the matter and the gentle current of his business was not in- terrupted by their proceedings. So it is that the little Spanish girl who stole aged Count Tolfskow’s heart under the great rosebush three short years ago is now living with her thirteenth husband on a little ranch outside Santa Barbara. He is the poorest man in this world's, goods that ever made love to Clements Ruiz. She has neither jewels nor pretty clothes, and her creamy hands have learned to work as they never did before in all her short life, but with true femi in# inconsistency she seems better con- tented than she has ever done before. But will this content endure? He is her thirteenth husband, and he has brought her to poverty. Will there be a fourteenthd