The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 21, 1900, Page 7

ng of the game. I drew the good ess men, {o the fights, men fons would not the crowds that then And as a result yo ringside when t nest men are about tc some of th are trying to d made it fair, honest The worst of this, too, of the sport rests with If they go on trying ey will find their like the Corbett-Mc- sthing that was so barefaced there have disagreement or about the purse or 1d prevent the men but nothing like and making belleve like two monkeys. n recollect. the other fake, e heels of est affalr—another whe bet m ! n paid to bett one P st plece of I new of. of spor s Iy out of this t¥ in the country; it's fir thing, and what s done here will be all over the r hely ng right here B ¥ ove cit this world for 1 old New York; give last and always. all depends upon the men » Assembly and in the Sen- »fess to be much of a poli- the me New York f urse to me as if men Legistature, where ns in power in this eit the rty, are making too much out of the fights in this city. But nsense, and these men of know better. of the benefit these affa'rs nancial interests of t s city e € how much money these ke riving out of the city and t te as well. fight In this city between two big, ever, honest men will bring sporting men from all over the country And busi- mer will come here to s i drummer, is generally a having to a trip put it nd then t and fn- ing one he will week or if it is name one mead to an1 in to get a good the Garden, ck in bed with ey m at ine th yrning, as But more rips to a town v here is nothing n, where > one you suppose m here fre anywhere or from of the Miss sippi to Carson City or fight T really don’t belleve could get a handful. What man is going to rfde three or four days in one car, stay at a place where there are nothing like civilized hotels, and _where there is nothing but for the fight? I went ) see Fitzsimmons defeat Corbett; 1 t pay me enough to make me that trip They were banking getting a lot of people and a lot of that battle, but they didn't. e not 100 men there from San and it's only twelve hours' there, as I recollect it, to Car- And every man Jack of them, 1l the others; too, made quick tracks to get out of that place the the fight was over. to see you walt again t's not so in this eity. man can come from far away 10 the theater or to the oper: Here a he can go : he can do & thousand and one things to amuse him- self or to instruct himself, and he may transact some business as well as see the fight. Pringing off these fights here means throngs of people from Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, Cleve- land, Chicago and St. Louis, and even from Kansas City. And they are all of them looking for a good time and are ready and willing to pay their money to get it. Doesn’t that mean Something for the money interests of the city? . + 8o the future of prizefighting, I say, all depends on what we are allowed to do in this city. But what are we to do? Well, I tell you what I think should be done. I can see no reason why good boxing Is not as good any other sport, or is not as’ hon- orable as any other profession, if it is handled right and the men who engage in it arc honest. In the first place I belleve the State oo ol should license boxing just as it e racin licenses men who are en- ho ake the g A in m ghters carry on the game ¢ s0 much to the § Then there should be who has proved himself ho able, competent and fair and e Y way Then omly the AR hould be licensed should like to see dir ctin der such cumstances is who, to mind, is the fa my right man that ever lived. Tom O'Rourke would be another » kind of mad t then le to do that, and I am the 1e world to throw stones the State stipulate how rounds men would finish; 1 put twenty-five rounds as the limit. If twb men are anxious to fight it wiil not be hard to tell who is the better if they are both in the ring at the end of twenty-five rounds. That gives seventy-five minutes of f and twenty-four minutes of resting, of as” harl put himself man in that time can’t demo ity, why, the 3 X nine minu eyer in R as and 1f one h ninety any man 10, good erowd I would put it in the power of the ref- eree to stop a fight at &y time he be- lieves one man whinped. I can't see is the use of letting a m-n stay in ring when his nose is smathed, his his ears torn he is doing. and he doe He's eyes closed know what ‘t only a THE SUNDAY CALL. purse. There are plenty of these fellows who have no better sense than to put themselves in jeor It would make and the sheriffs ather sleep. Uvely. work for the but I palice think they would About the men who are in the top r now I will say th Jefiries is young 1 strong, and it doesn’t scem to me as if he would be beaten soon If he takes good care of him ola tz a wonderful nd the way f s no getting & m this T don't bel sve after g Corbett will ever amount to much in the ring. As for McCoy, he is young and he 1 good one if he is on the level, and it may be he will be able to re- te himsel graces of the good are t me shabby treatment, and are willing to forgive and forget. Nobody appr: s that fact more than myself. Many think Corbett oug to rank sec- ond be use he made such a good showing with Jeffrie: you must remember that for a lc Jeffries.he ped to train Corbett; he was his punct and so it was that Corbett knew all of his defects. And he was wise enough not to start right in fighting him. but to keep away for 2 time, Je I believe, woul® whip him much sooner now, as he is im- proving all the time, while the other man is golng back Writing of Corbett reminds me that he and T fought for the st purse ever od for. It was ), and there was There ide. 00 on each n of the purse up was the winner was to take all. I gota beating; that's all I got cut of it. 1 sometimes wish I was fight- ing now, for with these clubs giving a per- centage of the receipts a first-class man who Is always ready to fight could make a barrel of money. But it's too late to think about that now: I've had my share of the glory and money, and my time has gone. In ending I want agaln to say to all men punching bag for his opponent under such conditions ahd the spectacle is a ing one. He's a target that any smith could hit and I believe the should decide it then and there. 1 would not have more than oné fight a week ¢n any eity. Of course, even at that rate it would be impossible to provide tip- toppers all the time to entertain the peo- ple; you couldn’t have champlons battling all the time, but you can get lots of good second class men in all the weights who can put up a good enough contest to at- tract a crowd and give them a good show. It wouldn't be necessary always to have the men evenly matched. They could do as I did—let the champion offer a purse to any man who could stay with him for more than a certaln number of rounds. I alwayes had $1000 up which said that I could stop any man in four rounds; I don't see why the present first-raters shouldn’t do the same thing. And, by the way, I think I was the only champion who ever did it. The result was I had to keep in pretty good condition all the time, for I didn’t know but that some day when I was not quite it some fellow would come along and win my roll. These are my ideas for running the game, and I flatter myself they aren’t bad. As it Is now there’s no chance at all. There's nothing in it for two men to go into a room and fight; the public isn't there and there's no large smount of meney for them to fight fer. It might be well enough to satisfy a grudge, but to make a living it won’t do. And I am much afraid that if something isn’t done soon vou will find some of these fellows golng back to the old trick of sneaking into some barn away in the backwoods and battlipg without gloves for any kind of a revolt- black- refeee who would make thelr livinz in the ring, “Play fair with the public, for it is the olic that supports you. It's your bread nd butter.” fl/ & ™ Ty pu With a facllity that might surprice some of those who do not appreciate “The Big Fellow” at his full worth he wrote this article In en hour, stopping occasionally in a mental research for the right phrase. He was seated at a desk in the rear rcom of his saloon on Forty-second street. Out- side were scveral of his friends; constant- 1y the attendant was coming to him with the remark that one or the other of them wanted him ‘“to have something.”” On each occasion he took a clgar. He says he has stopped his battles with John Bar- leycorn, who, he admits, is the most suc- cessful “knocker-out” he ever encoun- tered. And there is not a man.who knows John L. Sullivan, “always on the level,” who does not hope he will never change his mind. HUGH J. BEIRNE. EETWEEN LIFE AND DERTH. HE more closely medical sclentists examine unique cases brought to their attention the more firmly is the impression implanted in thefr minds that the line which marks the pas- sage from Nfe to death is a very broad one and that it may be frequently ex- no _ments. tended far beyond the usually accepted state of death. Evidence Is accumulating of the most surprising nature to prove that life frequently exists after supposed death has occurred, much of which is both interesting and highly instructive. The f be directed is the collecting of evidence irding the immediate effect of severe point to which attention may and mortal Injury on the subject thereof. One of the best known Hlustrations of the fact that such injury does not produce immediate death, or at least that absolute cessation of all movements which we pop- ly recognize as the main feature of life's ending. is that afforded by the case tain Nolan. The captain headed the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava. In the course of his duties he was struck _in % the chest by a part of a shell, the mis- sile tearing the chest open and wounding the heart. Kinglake glves a graphic ac- count the inci- dent “The u of sword,” dropped f hand, but arm with which was waving it the moment before mained high uplifted in the grip of the practiced horseman, remain- ing as yet unrelaxed, still held him firm in the saddle. Missing the perfect hand of his master and finding the accustomed governance now succeeded by ling reins, the horse all at once wheeled about and began to gallop back upon the front of the advancing brigade. Then from he m the he stiil re- and the alr, the dang- what had been Nolan—and his form was still high and erect in the saddle, his sword arm still high in the air—there bufst forth a cry so strange and appalling that the hearer who rode nearest him called it unearthly. And in truth, I Imag- ine, the sound resulted from no human will, but rather from the spasmodic forces which may act upon the bodily frame when life as a power has ceased. The firm-seated rider, with arm uplifted and stiff, could hardly be-ranked with the liv- ing. The shriek men heard rending the air was scarce other than the shriek of a corpse. The dead horseman rode on till he passed through the interval of the Twelfth Light Dragoons. Then at last he dropped from the saddle.” G. L. Kilmer, who passed through the Civil War, in his turn gives an interest- ing parallel case to that of Nolan. He tells us that a sergeant in charge of the Ninth, Corps of the Confederate works east of JPittsburg leaped on the parapet and with his cap in his left hand and his gun in his right cheered his comrades on- ward. A shell decapitated him at this moment ‘“‘as completely as a knife could have done,” says Mr. Kilmer, “but the tall form continued erect for some sec- onds, the arms still waving frantically, but with ever-less- ening sweep and power, until the forces of the body collapsed, when the headless trunk top- pled over to the ground.” We may regard as facts the circum- stances above noted —that men killed in- stantly, In the popular acceptance of the short term, may continue to execute ap- parently definite and purposive move- A somewhat ghastly recital re- ferring to a gufllotined man has been gen- erally credited to the renown of the Paris School of Medicine, and relates to the same curious features that mark the bat- tlefield. The Parislan case was that of Dr. de la Pommerais, who was guillotined for the crime of murder by poisoning. The story goes that some of his con- freres walted on De la Pommerals before his execution and, informing him that it was their desire in the interests of science to test whether any degree of conscious- ness remained In the decapitated head just after execution, asked him if possi- ble to give some sign or token by way of solving the pgoblems De la Pommerals acquiesced in the suggestion and it Is sald that, securing possession of his head as it fell and preventing further hemor- rhage, the doctors shouted in the ear of their former confrere demanding of him to give some response. One of the eyes was said to slowly open and shut, and then all symptoms of life ceased. A writer remarks that a freshly guillo- tined head has been known to make ges- tufes of the mouth and to move the eves when a bystander taunted it. I have been unable to trace either the truth of the De la Pommerais story or the source of the last named Incident, but there is no rea- son why both should not have been cor- rectly reported. Much would depend on the Tapld flow of blood in the case of the head of the gutilotined criminal in respect the existence sclousness. We see a very distinct reflection of the dual state in the very of movement or con- of our vital ar- rangement of our nervous system. The chief masses of that system knows, consist of the brain and the spinal cord, and a second system of perve mas called the sympathetic also and Is found lying as a do cha nerve knots or ganglia down the fr the spine. Now. it is evident that as is the most Important of th ipparatus che s every one system exi of brain part ne the ous spinal cord sympathetie system must together oc cupy rdary position. This is unaue tionably the case and the plan on wh our nervous affairs hLave been ordered represents we \own pri “division of labor.” Wit to look after our nervous system exhi its a clear specialization of its a sec duties there are parts in the brain whose d it is to “think™ th other pa whose function it is to guide our move- ments. If there are groups of nerve cells des for t purpe f receiving om the de ment" of the brain there are other groups that super- vise the work of the heart, and that eon- trol diges proceedings, and t see to it that the futfes of the lungs are duly discharged On such a principle of the division of bor we are bound to find t varied wa and works Of the mervous sys car ried out on different levels, as regards the importance of the dutles performed Now, It happens that the spinal cord which runs through the middle of the backbone, within which It is protected really a kind within a bony tube. is 4 respects. It acts ¢ brain deputy in many on the whole as the confidential servan of the brain, but it also possesses an in pendence of its own. Its duties are of a lower © e than those dis Dy the brain. but they are none the sential for the perfect ordering of body's welfare. Even if the head office be singularly well organized it cannot ex- ercise its functions properly in the ab- gence or inefliiciency of the sub-office, and the specinl cord Is really a series of sub- offices which carry out many actions which otherwise we might be tempted to credit to the share of the brain 1f we divide the spinal cord of a frog and irritate the foot the leg will be moved, after the fashion in which the uninjured animal would ‘resent being tickled. Here we have separated the brain from the feet, and yet control of the muscles of the leg is not lost. That which the brain does in the frog apparently is not so much to carry out movements, but to ate and control them, If a frog's legs be allowed to come in contact with some weakly fr- ritating fluld the legs would naturally be withdrawn after an interval. Time after time the action will go on, till we can gauge fairly the pe- ried which .wiil elapse between the withdrawal of the legs and their de- scents. If, now, the spinal cord be divid- ed below the brain, 3 we find these move- ments much accelerated. They pro- ceed at a quicker rate, because the brain control is removed and the mechanism of the antmal Is leff, as it were, to run wild, like an engine from which the influence of the fiywheel has been removed. But we may find eviderce that the spinal cord of the frog may control aec- tions in a fashion that would almost lend belief to the idea that it is much more than a mere brain deputy. Cut off a frog’s head carefully, so that there may be as little disturbance of parts as ls con- sistent with the performance of this op- eration. We have removed the brain. of course, and all that is left in the body of the chief nervous sys.em is the spinal cord. Now place a drop of acetic acld on the inner side of one thigh of your headles frog and you - .l see the animal ralses the foot of that leg in .. endeavo- to wipe the acid off. This Is a weli-known experiment and its teachings are singu- larly Instructive. WILL ESKIMOS DISAPPEAR? MONG the great questions that are being studied by scientists in con- nection with the far northern dis- trict of Alaska is whether or not the advent of civilization into that sec- tion is making inroads on the native races. Strange as it may seem, within the past two years the native population of Alaska has been decreasing, and by those who have made a careful study of the matter It is said that within the past twelve months there has been a decrease of tully 60 per cent in the number of those who In former days were considered races and who, wera physically strong tle of fatigue. act, Investigations, it d, show that the native races of the new realm of gold are fast dying off, and at the same rate of decreass as In the past two years it will only be a short time until th skimo will be only told of in history or in the fireside tales of those who have been the pioneers in the land of six months’ night. In the work of search Geographlcal Society among the hardlest sunshine or fros the Alaska has made exten: investigatio nd the above facts ars the result of its labors. In July last Ar thur C Jackson, dent of the so- went to Alas- n the interests the socfety, and during ¢ two months of his stay there he pald much attention to the con dition of the natives. Among the sights he witnessed in a ber of the sma n settlements along th > the Intertor of the district and far were many heartrending and During t much ha some me are bett asures Gov nt to enumerat kuk dis ries of an apy in several of the 4 that he had “In severa ited we f ter seas of the family w some of the ma in the body warm or squalid pover which al, should sals be In wi to prer ts b that among the A we found aska n consequent firearms abundance, t nd it a com- parat et all the guns he wante It fore he understood quicker m to his white broth arrow. The res that whereas as a rule an in his po e and which he al and rot. He saw d gave no th sequences or that he w position as the forelgner whom tempted to foll “The result of this is that to-day there is a scarcity of the fur-bearing animals in Western Alaska. The Indian, before he realized it, was robbed of his meat subsistence, and worse than all, probably, is the fact that in this wanton destruc- tion he has lost the animals that fur- nished him with the furs from which he made his clothing. So it has come to pass that during the last winter, while the house was cold, there was very little meat, and the average Eskimo had not sufficlent clothing to keep himself warm. “It {s true that within the past two years the Alaska Indlan has had a great- er revenue from his furs than ever be- fore, but the Indian up there is just improvident as the Indian in any other part of the United States, and so he has nothing left with which to purchase either food or clothing. To these condl- tions to a large extent is due the great amount of disease and death that has prevailed in that district during the past year, and thus it can be sald that directly to the advance of civilization in Alaska is due the present con- dition of the Eskimo and his threatened extinction.” ———e—— The telephone line . between' Paris and Berlin, which has been but recently in- augurated, was com- pleted In June last. The French and German officlals, however, would not give the line over to public use until it had been thoroughly tested. A conversation between Berlin and the French towns cost 5 mar! aept in the case of Bordeaux, Orleans and St. Etienne, for which 6% marks is charg- ed. Both the lines between Paris and Ber- lin and Paris and Frankfort are double and are constructed with bronze wire five millimeters thick. It was originally the intention of both governments that the telephone should be ready at the opening of the exhibition. The German part of the wire was brought te the French fron- tler in March. The French portion, howe ever, was not ready until June, the white man