The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 4, 1902, Page 3

SUNDAY CALL, FROM EARLY DEWY AT NIGHT against the ng the sunset and fade over the The chimes were eir swe ate watc! ng sts. He their ne idle sun- nto it now oring love. that knew wed languor- rushed tumul- had only been beside him to her ta Juan or simply Juah—Jz ssible name for the Spanish nce—and then Chita was early dew morning unti nurc ew W was coming, what these and all this dallyin, -scented grass would content to wait; the was sure, and just as one holds a n chartreuse for a moment, inhal fragrance of a hundred flowers, o Churchill held this cup from lipe. He had no thought of the fu- , no thought of what would become of Chita when he had gone, but lived in the present end for the present. The bells had grown quiet; the hills THITA WAS WITH HIM MORNING ONTIL LAYE were merely blue-black shadows agalinst a blue-black sky; the evening star hung like 2 beacon light on the crest of the range; one belated swallow scurried to its nest under the earthen tiles; the old gate creaked on its hinges and Churchill was in the orc He walked slow the adobe church, over which wild were trailing. The gray-green of the olive trees quivered in the ing breeze, and, half-aloud, Churchili black- lives they were not blind to him. gray leaves were kind to him. 0 the woo sed h vebrows lig shrugged his shoulders. 1tly ion was s thing in the suggestion of the lines ttat him. He & n to sing softly, Chita sprang from the shadow of es to meet him. Her lap was full of flowers, which fell to the ground, and on her head was blackberry lea had sketched with this wreath of twisted wreath of es and blos-ome. Chu or as when he saw it he frowned, and came an unwelgome thot t of thorns. 12 and still the fl “Has it seemed long. Chita? The su tiful! 1 couldn’t set colors were so be leave until they had quite faded away but I wished so much that you were there to see them with me.’ “The lights were lovely here in the gar- den, and—see!” She gave a low cry a pointed toward the t, where a round ver ball was slowly floating up over the e-clad hills into a of blue. They watched it silently. Churchill lay with his elbow on the ground, one hand supporting his head and the other pl idly with Chita’s little brown fingers. was go content to be there with 1 breathing the perfumed alr of night a watching the light as it slowly climbed the hills and flooded the valley. The. olive- covered hillside slopes rapidly down from the mission to the pear orchard, planted a century ago by Padre Juan Junisto. The trees are, many of them, still alige and bearing in spite of years of negiect and blight. Here and there one that has given up the struggle stretches its gaunt arms p Superst ATLROAD engineers are inclined to be superstitious. They hesitate to admit the truth of the assertion, but, like all men who are constant- Iy exposed to danger, they come to expect disaster to be preceded by a herald. *“No; I am not superstitious,” said one, “but my wife is, and I have never been in & wreck since we were married but what she predicted it was going to occur. I remember when I was running out of Ma on the Rio Grande that by her sistence in the truth of a dream she ed my life. I was to have taken out the freight in the morning, but she awakened me soon after midnight. °‘Oh, she said, ‘I have had such a dread- dream. I thought I saw 404 (that was gine) plunge into another engine d the crash, Jim, and the hiss of steam, and the cries of the poor ned under the wreck. You ot go out in the morning. I know red.’ I laughed at her r to go to sleep; that she was ted, but I was tired, snoozing the sleep of the I awoke at 6 o’clock she was ggard, and I saw that if I went out she would be a nervous wreck before I returned. I decided to give in for s pale and e and I fixed it up so that another man took out my train. His body was brought k tha 2 v had had a col- 3 substitute was kilied. and the other engineer and both f n were njured. I pay more to my dreams now. but to attempt to act engine is going into a t the throttle, and me must depend » save me. erstition if you e, the veteran engineer on the Rio Grande, “but I have come to regard the number thirteen with & certain amount of awe. To show you bow it is interwoven with the tragedies like aughed Charlie tions of Rairoad Engineers of my life: On July 13, 191 T was pulling train No. 7 out of Denver. At thirteen minutes past 12 I struck a wagon con- | taining Max Wagoner and his 13-y boy near Petersburg. The boy was killed. I reported the accident from the Littleton office and was delayed just thirteen min- utes. At Palmer Lake the conductor casually remarked that we had just thir- teen passengers in the sleeper for Cripple Creek.” Tom Loftus of the Colorado and South- ern looked serious when the subject of engineers’ superstitions was broached “Well, I have an unlucky day,” sald he, “or, maybe, it is a lucky day, for although all kinds of mishaps occur to my engine | on that day, I have so far escaped injury. It is the last day of the year. When I climb into the cab on December 31 I al- ways say: ‘Now, look out, Tom, old man.’ Ten years ago the coming December 31, I was pounding along on a double-header from Trinidad to Denver. We were mak- ing about thirty miles an hour through a blinding snowstorm. You couldn't see fifty feet ahead. Between Benares and Huerfano we crashed into another doubl s header, which was making about forty miles an hour in the direction of Trinidad. I saw the other train in time to reverse and jump. I escaped without serfous in- jury, but one of the firemen on the train bound south was killed and the rest of the engine crews was bunged up. It was all caused by a fool operator, who forgot to give me an order. He fled the country. After that something always happens on the anniversary. Once an engine wheel snapped off and went whizzing across the prairie, but I stopped before any damage was done. Another time I dropped a palr of truc before I got three blocks from the station. 8o it has gone. Some day it will be serious; I suppose.”—Denver News, —_— The English railways cost on an aver- age £50,000 per mile; the German, £20,000, and the American, £11,000, = SHE STUMBLED TO HER FEET AND F-OLLOWED into the alr as though loth to fall and break the symmetry of the avenue up which the brown-clad fathers had paced, chanting their prayer and fingering their drew nearer to the girl, growing on the pungent odor with that of the roses and Jessamine Chita The yerba buena hillside sent forth a which mingled had let fall. ‘Padre Juan” Junisto was good, so good to my people. old man, you know, when my grand- mother was a little girl, told me so0 often how he looked and how he worked for my people, here he found them sick and unhappy and wicked, but he loved them and al- ways told them that they made him un- happy when they were bad. They saw how good he was and how wretched they “Doesn’t it seem to you that you can | almost see him?” Chita asked, breaking the long sllence; “there, walking up and down under the trees?” ““See whom, see what?’ asked Church- 1ll, raising his head. Padre Juan,” murmured Chita. He was so goodl to me that he is here and to-night—" With an involuntary shudder Churchill He was an and she has When he came It often seems made him, and tried to do what he wanted. When I was very little my grandmother used to tell me that he ‘would know if I was bad and that he would be unhappy. Then I used to think that he lived here in the olive orchard and I trled to find him. Afterward I knew he was not here but I came just the same because I—I loved him—and it was sweet to be here where he had been, and it seemed to me that he could see me better here.” Chita’s words came slowly. There were long pauses between the sentences, but Churchill was strange- ly silent. “Padre Juan always said that if people would only be good they would be happy. Sometimes when I was very unhappy I came here and cried and ‘cried, lying In the long grass, and then it always seemed to me that the good padre brought me comfort so that I could go away glad once more. To-night I wanted to tell Padre Juan how happy I am and I—I 'am glad he seems so near, for he will know and be happy too.” It was all so childish, so foreign to Churckill’s ideas, and yet the girl’s words affected him curiously. They seemed tp penetrate through all the conventional thoughts and years of contact with a roughening world to some mmner recess where they touched a chord, a single note, that had long been silent. Now it quivered at the touch. “It is s0 easy to be good when we are so happy, don’t you think it 1s?” Chita bent forward and lald her cheek against his. It was the first caress she had ever given him and it was the touch of a lov- ing child; she was still only a child, but the moment of transformation was near. Padre Juan Junisto himself would not have awed Churchill as did this conjured vision of Chita’s. He would have bit- terly resented a human, priestly warning, but this presence that filled the place! He seemed to have realized it uvon his first entrance into the garden; mow it stood between him and Chita. He knew that he must leave her at once; that he must save her from the destroying in- fluence of his love, but in the moment of renunciation she was infinitely dearer and ble at first, but he made a second effort. “Chita, I—I am going away. I—I came to-night to say good-by. I must go early; early in the morning.”. He did not move, nor did she. There was no outward sound, but in Chita's ears there was the rush and roar of a shattering universe. Suddenly Churchill sprang to his feet, raised the girl in his arms and covered her lips and eyes and hair with kisses. Only once he jreathed “I love you,” and then the dlender figure clung to Almost soughly he untwined her arms from about his neck and laid her on the ground. She was stunned by the passion of love that surged through he e was conscious only of his words, “I love you.” The clang of the iron gate aroused her. He had said that he was go He had sald good-by! She stumbled to her feet and followed him. The gate was fastened on the outside. She beat her hands against the iron and called aloud her lover’s name, but there was no answer. He had gone from her forever and one more soul had been saved by the Padre Juan Junisto's midnight tryst with Chita in the garden of San Juan Bautista. 3 — +* Monkey Lore From the Wiias of India. ONKEYS in India are an um- mitigated nuisance, especially in the country. I have often come across in the jungles adjoining the villages of Northern Bengal whole | troops of them, whose depredations In flelds and orchards were the despair of the unfortunate villagers. These troops always con of one huge male and about 100 females. The fact is, when & little monkey is born in the pack it is suffered to live if a female, but instantly the father if it happens to be & The mother, however, sometimes ges jo hide the little one until he is able to get about, and then sends him | away before the big male catches sight of him. In this way it often happens that individual males are to be found living by themselves in single blessedness. Now, getting tired of solitude after a time and perhaps believing in union as a source of strength, these bach often join to- gether and form a pack of their own—a sort of club. Then the fun begins. They want wives —very naturally. But how are they to get them? All the female monkeys of the country belong to the harem of some big brute or other. Clearly, the only solution is to attack such a m, kill the gotha (the aforesaid big bru and then divide the spoils. War is declared. The battle 13 a fierce one and often lasts several days. The party attacked always tries to retreat and often traverses several jungles, flelds and even villages. But the pursuit is hot | and vigorous, and at last a stand has to be made—sometimes in a village green or even an orchard of some country man- sion. In the actual fight the females generally remain faithful to their lord and master and help him flercely against his numerous assailants. But the result is a foregone conclusion, and the several widows, .after a very short perfod of mourning—usually manifested by a show of ill temper—are consoled by the vie- torious males, Now these battles cause sad havoo te the fields and orchards of the country and often prove a positive danger to the peo- ple, for though monkeys seldom attack men, woe to the luckless one who ven- tures to come near them in their deadly struggle. Moreover, when pressed by hunger, these packs are not to be trifled with, You may not mind even the dam-~ age done to your orchard by hundreds of monkeys gobbling up everything they cam lay their hands on, but it is quite a dif- ferent matter when you have to shug your doors and windows and stay in for days at a time becalise of the army out~ side. Consequently the object of the natives |1s to break up these packs by capturing their leaders. Killing is against the die~ | tates of conscience, but capture is not, es~ pecially as the monkey is liberated in & short time, as will appear presently. So, when a pack is about, the natives employ the following method: Close to an orchard a bit of level space is selected and a hole dug In it, about two feet deep and six or eight inches in diameter. A noose is made at one end of a long, stout cord and placed over the mouth of the hele. The cord is then passed threugh a pulley or ring attached to a tree close to the house | and the other end held some distance away by a concealed person. The noose and about ten or fifteen feet of the cord are covered with sand. Then a nice, tempting banana is placed in the hole and a number of rotten ones—covere.dl’ hewever, with fresh skins—are strewn éver the ground. When the pack comes, the females are too shy to venture out into the open space near the house, but the big gotha is & brave fellow. He sees the banana on the ground, leaps down, takes up one, throws it away in disgust, then another, with the same result. Suddenly he notices the nice, tempting one in the hole and plunges his arm in. Immediately the cord is pulled, the noose fastened on the arm close to the shoulder, and the monkey dragged willy- nilly to the tree, whers the pulley orring is attached. Then the hiding shikari comes forth, and, circling round and round the tres with the cord heid tight in his is introduced not merely to but also because ! P finest soap or the purest water. The opera- tion is an Interesting one and a source of great amusement to the bystanders. The monkey, however, dodges his head about, only o get a good dose of soap in | his eyes and mouth. Then he has enough of it, especially as he feels dreadfully achy all over and the cords cutting inte his body every inch—to say nothing of the ersonal remarks and the highly adject- val language of the bystanders. He sub~ | mits to his fate with eastern stoieism. | His head is shaved clean as a billiard ball and then his face as well, nice and smaoth, sweeter than ever before. He dared not | like a baby’s. Then they let him go. But, move, he dard not speak and the mo- ments rushed by. The moon was nearly overhead and little rifts of light fiitered through the olive leaves, resting on the girl's dark hair. “Chita!” Churchill's voice was inaudi- | alas, such is the vanity of life, his wives | will not have him now that his beauty has gone, They disown him completely, cut ! him dead. Nay, they drive him away | the pack with contumely, with the ends of | their tails in the absence of do broomsticks. And thus being without leader the pack is soon brokem up. o