The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, November 24, 1901, Page 6

6 s Uy | DoLL THE PRIZE HOUSE OF THR DOLL SHOW THRT IS TO GIVE THR “RDMIRAL” AND “MRS, DRWRY” A HOME. HE Little Captain is to have the biggest Thanksgiving of all the six he has ever seen. For the Doll- house is his, Not simply a Dollhouse. Not such a one as anybody might buy in any store, but The Dollhouse, the one that you spell with capital letters and think of with reverence and yearning every time the doll show is mentioned, There were people at the show, many of them, far richer and bigger than the Little Captain, and they all seemed to want the Dollhouse as much as he did. Or perhaps not quite as much; for the Little Captain has never in all his life known what it was to be quite well, and when a person has to lle around the house and can’t get out to play shinny and prisoners’ base, he has more time to think and think and work up a fever of thinking about his chance of drawing the prize, That is the way it was with Robert La Fontaine, winner of this season’s Doll- house. He has lived six such miserable vears of sickness and weariness and wishing. When he was taken to the Doll- Show and suddenly came upon the House he was quite certain that he was dream- ing. Then he went up to it and looked closer, and the peculiarity of this dream was that it didn’t vanish the way others do. After ten minutes’ critical examination, which took in the details of all the eight rooms and their furnishings from bath to tele- phone, he came to the conclusion that it was a real thing and the most real thing he had ever seen, Then he wanted it. How he wanted it! He asked a thousand questions to the minute about it and how it was to be had. When he was told about the raflie arrangement he explained it carefully to his mother and demanded that she buy a ticket, She did. That ticket was fatefully num- bergd.2610." The Little Captain could hardly be THE dragged away from the House, although it came time to go home and he was tired out. But he felt as if he must stay on the spot, as if by doing so he might help on the career of his precious ticket, ‘When he went home he thought of nothing else, he talked of nothing else. He had an immense amount of confidence in what his one ticket would accomplish, although his mother thought it held a very small chance and told him so. But the Little Captain was going to hope to the end and he defied anybody to discour- age him, He had owned a dollhouse already which his mother had made for him, In the intervals when she could snatch time she had used her deft fingers to fashion a home for his bisque family. It was a most ingenious affair, considering that it was made by a mother, but compared with the palatial affair at the show—ah, there was no comparison whatever, It was lighted by a simple candle chan- delier and it lacked most modern con- venlences, even the simplest, such as running water and telephone. Admiral and Mrs. Dewey, who constituted the bisque family, had been obliged to live in this anu had been cheerful and smiling always in spite of inconveniences, but the truth is they must have realized all the time that their home was made not SUNDA CALL. 7 : A W v THAZT . Wow THE NEW DO HOUs'~, of brownstone, not of colomat prick, not of fashionable stucco or even comforta- ble clapboard, but as a matter of plain, unvarnished fact, it was made of— cracker boxes! It cost a pang to think of keeping a national hero and his beautiful bride in a cracker-box house. All the more so to Robert because, being a United States officer himself, he could the better ap- preciate the admiral’s heroism, The Ldittle Captain has been called so since he was three years old, when he used to go out to the Presidio and drill Captain Hager's Tennessee Regiment while the whole hun- dred of the boys in blue obeyed sharp at his lisped command. He was a soldier in heart, but his strength was too little then for his duties as captain and after- ward, when he went,_ into a camp and came out with a rousing case of army measles, his military career had to be cut off short. But his heart is in the same place and the life that he leads in his feverish im- agination is aglow with red, white and blue. Therefore his dolls are permitted to be no less personages thap generals and admirals and their families. He explained to the Deweys that they had a prospect of moving into new quar- They took it stoically, with no intent of exciting themselves while the matter ters. PoBEer A FONTAN = THE LITILE < AFgAIN PUSHNE i was as yet in the air, and Mrs. La Fon- taine was frightened at the tremendous confidence that The Captain showed, for she realized that the chances of number 610 were one against many hundred. The Little Captain simply kept right on believing. There are those who will say that his faith was what accomplished the wonder. As for him, he was not in the least sur- prised, only breathlessly delighted, Yhen 610 won. “You can move right in,” he told the Dewey family. It proved that they had to delay a lit- tle in the moving, for the wonderful eight- room Colonial mansion had to be taken apart before it could be wriggled into the La Fontaine front door. However, mov- ing always involves some delay and some inconveniences and the Deweys are phil- osophical, They look forward to eating their Thanksgiving dinner in the splendid dining-room where Flemish oak and green tapestries make dining a work of art and where a dark butler will be present to at- tend to their every want. It will be a Thanksgiving worthy the name. And as for The Little Captain— It passes words to him. And yet he knew it was going to happen all the time. London Telephone Girls:™ ‘“When girls are chosen for the new Government telephone service in- Lone- don,” says the London Express, ‘“‘the edu- cational examination sinks into insignifi- cance before the physiological test. ; No girl will employed if she is beh"w [ feet 2 inches high in her stocking feet. She must possess good hearing, have no defect of speech, and must be tested by viva voee examination, in which partic- ular attention is to be paid to articula- tion, pitch of voice and general self-pose session. Any candidate showing any ine dication of nervousness, hysteria, want of self-possession or a strongly marked twang shall be rejected, The majority will probably pass in self-possession, but dialect is a severe test."” be