The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 20, 1902, Page 12

THE SUNDAY CALL. e, ARD HARDING DAVIS, with ‘) est book of short stories sily carries off the first prize for A X e best work of that class that s season has far seen, Or E t It is just the book t yacat e typical n- g mbs 3] for the lazy s whe ou wish entertain: mental effort. The Scribner’'s Sons, New the book a most’ at the illustrations are Bach story has it Mr. Davis has bee is skef illu 1 as Frederic Reming r Appleton Clark, Howarc . . M. Ashe and F. Dc he pictures have t page and will serve their excellence. the ini- book afte “Ranson’ of the five that gc the volume nts of that e of them is far tells us of a succes- &io incidents that happen int etest of all dead places - post. The hero is a service, United States ny when war talk ran s seen plenty of e in the Philippines as a vol- now*accepted a r service and cked for some f the way sta- west on the hands of the pund- ups re- why it's business. 2 x times now in is, if he's f men, he's the since the days of Abe sent mood was ‘It doesn’t a coach,” he g le ds to an- t to show his theories the stage a pair of him, but he will use only the oach, but he has s from th ersation has and a red rides out to show that attorney ed to a second The wears a and ymaster, h he st night two m upon each ncho, coincider > hanged if I light heart ¥ not guilty muc concerned his defense forced rr, his wo me He finds of being ighter n th may first himself in obliged tr and for e same breath d, the reader the me part pro; than the n of affairs op his t at all ireiy sfaction. to ILLU:%TRATJONS From I’\ICHARDTIARDIN cDavis’s LATEST Door 4 o)) 57 A N = AN ITTPIRE WIPE ohis OF TELT. 7 cen The second story, “The Bar Sinister,” of a journalist who already seems to Mave is new n for Richard Harding had his measure of hard luck. Da but it is one of the best dog It is the story of a man of talent whom stories that v ing bull tells his own gutter to the > have ever read. The fight. D that is the hero of the tale ory of I se from the champion’s class. The “Kid"” drink has made unreliable in the eyes of the publishers and so, at a time just prior to the fall of Cervera, this man, Channing, finds himself all but starving a bar sinister in his’ pedigree, for to death, and witheut a chance of getting while his father is “Champion TRegent to the front either on his own account or ' his mother is only a poor littie in the employ of some syndicate or news- nd-tan street walf, but he final- paper. One of his former companions to down the fargily skeleton way est prizes t has won for 1 nd from his father the high- hat dignitary’s blue blood In fact fortune finally holds a very responsible position as cor- respondent for the “Consolidated Press"” and upon being approached by Channing, this man offers to take Channing with smiles so bl upon ¢ne “Kid” that he. him on his own specially chartered boat meets dear old mother, sav in the capacity of stoker but not as a her life, to see her happily es- writer, T offer refused, but later tabl nels, hed a pet in the Wyndham ken- events so shape themselves that Chan- ning finds himself on this boat and the other man is down in the cabin drunk 1" tells of the bitter fortune LOPP Sl ke J‘ANszrDL LY . R HMANDS HE SO TTAMDIDR — 73 and totally oblivious to the fact that Cer- vera has tried to run the gauntlet at San- tiago and has been annihilated. Channing, however, saves the day for his friend by writing the account of the battle and getting It cabled to the “Con- solidated Press” one day ahead of all other accounts. He does not sign his own name but cables that of his friend as the author of the story. It is the old case of virtue being its own reward, for, after Channing has recovered from the sick- ness induced by the terrible mental strain of that day when he was in no condition to perform so great a task, he finaliy reaches New York, sick and poor, to find that the other man has accepted as his own all the honors of Channing's work, has been given a trip to Eurcpe by his cmployers and Is even at the moment of Channing's arrival being cntertained by #is fellow reporters as the man wHo wrote the best story of the war. Mr. Davis’ description of the scene just before the battle and the effect of it all on a non-combatant but an eye witness is remarkably well done: , ] On the shore there was no sign of human Nfe nor of human habitation. Except for the Bpanish flag floating over the streaked walls of Morro, and the tiny blockhouse on every mountain-top, the squadron might have been anchored off a deserted coast. The hills rose from the water's edge l'ke a wall, their peaks green and glaring In the sun, their valleys dark with shadows. Nothing moved upon the ‘white beach at thelr feet, no smoke rose from thelr ridges, not even a palm stirred. The great range slept in a biue haze of heat. But only a few miles distant, masked by its frown- ing front, lay a gayly colored, red-roofed eity besteged by encircling resiments, a broad ba: bolding a squadron of great warships, and gliding cat-like through {ts choken undergrowth and crouched among the fronds of its motion- less palms were the ragged patriots of the Cuban army, silent, watchful, waiting. But the great range gave no sign. It frowned in the sunlight, grim and impenetrable. “It's ‘Sunday,” exclaimed the captain. He pointed with his finger at the decks of the battleships, where hundreds of snow-white figures had gone to quarters. “It's church ser- vice,” he said, ‘‘or it's general Inspection.”” Channing looked at his watch. It was thirty minutes past 9. “It's church service,” he said. “I can sea them carrying out the chaplain's reading-desk on the Indlana.” The presshoat pushed her way nearer into the circle of bat- tleships until their leaden-hued hulls towered high above her. On the deck of each the ship's company stood, ranged in motionless ranks. The calm of a Sabbath morning hung about them, the sun fell upon them like a benedic- tion, and so still was the air that those on the pressboat could hear; from the stripped and naked decks, the voices of the men answering the roll call in rising monotone, ‘‘one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four.”” The white- clad sallors might have been a chorus of sur- pliced choir boys. But, up above them, the battle flags, slumber- ing at the mast heads, stirred restlessly, and whimpered in their sleep. : Out through the crack in the wall of moun- tains, where the sea runs in' to meet the waters of Santlago harbor, and from behind the shield of Morro Castle, a great gray ship, like a great gray rat, stuck out her nose and peered about her, and then struck boldly for the open sea. High before her she bore the gold and blood-red flag of Spain, and, like a fugitive leaping from behind his prison walls, she raced forward for her freedom, to give bat- tle, to meet her death. A shell from the Towa shrieked its warning in a shrill crescendo, a glitter of flags painted their message against the sk ““The enemy's ships are coming out.”” they signaled, and the ranks of white-clad figures which the moment before stood motionless on the decks broke Into thousands of separate beings who: flung . \ themselves, panting, down the hatcnways, or sprang, cheering, to the fighting t Heavily, but s islands slip into the water when hakes the ocean bed, the great & led their bows in the their si smoke, the thunder of begt against the m. . and, from the shore, the Spanish forts roared back at them, until the air between was split and riven. The Spanish warships were already scudding clouds of smoke, pierced with flashes of red flame, and as they fled, fighting, their batterfes rat- tled with unceasing, feverish fury. But the guns of the American ships, straining in pur- suit, answered steadily, carefully, with relent- less accuracy, with cruel persistence. At regu- lar intervals they boomed above the hurricane of sound, like great bells tolling for the dead. 1t seemed to Channing that he had lived through many years; that the strain of the spectacle would leave its mark upon his neryes forever. He had been buffeted and beaten by a storm of all the great emotions; pride of race and country, pity for the dead, agony for the dying, who clung to bi & armor plates or sank to suffocation in the sea; the lust of the hunter, when the hunted thing is a fellow man; the joys of danger and of excitement, when the shells lashed the waves about him, and the triumph of victory, final, overwhelm- ing and complete, Four of the enemy’s squadron had their colors, two were on the beach, broken and burning, two had sunk to the bottom of the sea, two were in abject flight. Three battle- ships were hammering them with thirteen-inch guns. The battle was w “It's all over,” Chauning sald. questioned his own words. The captain of the tugboat was staring at the face of his silver watch as though It were a thing bewitched. He was pale and panting. He "looked at Channing pitecusly, as though he doubted his own senses, and turned the face of the watch toward him. “Twenty minutes!” Channing sald. God! Twenty minutes!" He had been to hel! and back again In twenty minutes. He had seen an empire, which had begun with Christopher Columbus and which had spread over two continents, wiped off the map in tweuty minutes. The book contains two other sketches, which are equally clever in their way. “La Lettre @ Amour” tells of the part a violinist has te play in an affair of the heart between two young people; and the power of music, in this case for the good, is extolled with charming sentiment. “In the Fog” is a clever story witkin a story of how some club men consvire to hold onc of their members from an important engagement by a piot most urique and entertaining. If you are secking good, wholesome fun for a summer's day this book Is just the one you want. - Literary Notes. Mr. Cutcliffe Hyne, the popular writer sen, tipped t with flame and suns roared and struck His tone “Good —a ?f sea yarns. whose new book, “The Dere- det,” is among the summer offerings of Lewis, Scribmer & Co. of New York, is an indefatigable traveler. No man is more at home either in the fo'c’s’'le or cabin than the genial creator of Captain Kettle. Mr. Hyne estimates that in ob- talning the incidents that figure in “The Derelict” he traveled a distance suffi- clent to take him around the world. D. Appleton & Co. will bring out a new book In a few weeks in their “Story of the West Series,” edited by Ripley Hitch- - cock. It is entitled “The Story of the Trapper,” written by Miss A. C. Lau:, whose ‘‘Heralds of Empire” was publish- ed by the same house in June. The Atlantic Monthly for Jul§ contains some Emersoniana of unusual - interest and importance—a series of transcriptions from Emerson’s unpublished noteboox: telling of his talks and walks with Wi liam Ellery Channing. These extraets, with their fine, ra flavor of transcen- dentalism and quaint humeor, are exceed- ingly characteristic and significant. Else- where in the number is printed a letter of Emerson’s containing some curious al- lusions to “those red-eyed men,” the ed- itors of the Atlantic. A book that will delight the soul of every true sportsman has recently ap- peared in .its second edition from the press’ of George W. Jacobs & Co. This is “Sport Indeed,” by Thomas Martin- dale. It consist of a series of articles giv- ing the author’s personal experiences with the rifle and rod, principally in the for- ests of Maine, New Brunswick, the Ca- nadian Neorthwest, North Dakota and North Carolina. Some of the subjects treated are “Killing the Caribou,” “My First Bull Moose,” “Brant Shooting,” *Quail Shooting in North Carolina™ and “Trout Tickling. Quite a valuabie little book has been issued by The Inland Printer Company of Chicago on “Establishing a Newspa- per,”” by O. F. Byxbee. Mr. Byxbee has carried owt fully the idea suggested on the title page of the work, indicating that’it shull be “a handbook for the prospective publisher, including suggestions for the financial advancement of existing daily and weekly journals.”” He gives every phase of the stariing and developing of a newspaper property, and in his preface very wisely suggests: “To start a news- paper is easy, but to establish it is quite a different matrer—a much deeper sub- this part of the sub- ject He goes ject as fuily 4 space permits, and the be only si careful thought and treatment, but it.should prove of practical to those who have money and desire to start in a publishing ven- ture. The August Delineator is a special fic- tion num nmer issue. Th2 —two of fiction co! i t Virginia Woodward isuaily good the: 3 ner talent in “The \ series of mishaps as: of a pret <irk contributes “‘While the with spirited each having a a suitry te developi Lap Van B F Siept,”’ a love The four sto wnd tie yet inexpe by ho e in narrative form McGowan Cooke; many ~photo- s and draw « given with it. urray € in the, series on training_of the chil treats of preco- city. Miss Kollog writes on the “After- ncon Tea Tabl Margaret Hall in_her cockery lessous deais with entrees. There is a chapter en hes for Hot Days,” 1 two pstrating a de- licious summer “Club Women" is interesting on accqunt of ther Los An- geies convention and the pletures of the new officers. The contents of Outing for July is as fcllows: “The Anglers of the Whart,” Leonidas Hubbard Jr.; “New Fields for Sportsmen,” Alger M. Fredericks; “Ths Breeding and Showing of Dogs by Wom- en,” Lillian Mocran; “A Chat About Camping,’ Sandys; “A Barnyard Lesson.” Willlam J. 'When Man Turns to the Water “The Story of the Trapper,” A. C. Laut; “The Fastest Sprint.”” Alexander Kidd; “Summer Days cn the Mirimichi,” Tap- pan Adney; “A Short Cut to Swimming,” Franklin Welles “The Relation of Athletics to Ar R. Hinton Perry; Catchine Shad for the Market,” Wil- liam A. Stimpson; “English Steeplechas- ing,” George C. Roller; “At Dawn of .ynn Tew Sprague; “Photograph- in Close Season,” James i ; “‘One De- W. P. Steph- Development in y Paret; ‘“The it McKenzie, M. e Richardson; Viewpoint,” Caspar ;. “Yachting—The Larchmont W. P. Steohens; “The Game “Angling—Striped n Yachting,” an ens; ecent Ameri Lawn_ Tennis,” J. Rule,” Field,” Edwyn Sand; Black Bass and Trout,” illlam C. Harris; ‘‘Photography for the Sports- man,” A - Radclyffe Dugmore; “The Sportsman’s Library Books Received. MRS. TREE—By Laura E. Richards. Dana Estes & . Doston. 75 cents. RANSON'S By Richard Harding Davis. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1 50. THE CREDIT OF THE COUNTY—By W. R. Norris. n & Co., New York. 3L THE ORE—By Barry Pain. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. $1 25. ELEMENTARY GEOGRAPHY—By H. Jus- tin Roddy, M. S. The American Bookx Com- pany, New York. 30 cents. COMPLETE GEOGRAFHY—By H. Justis Rodcy, M. S. The American Book Company, New York. $L “MAMMA DID THE POST! i BRING ME A LETTER?" Have we nat ofter heard. this query? “Clidaione” Letters bring a new joy once a meath to the litde once. f“BIRDALONE” LETTERS TO CHILDREN rrromr e Actusl letters In writiog. Seat in a sealed eavelnpe with real stamp, for boys and girks from § o 13 veurs, Fairy stories. rhvmes, sdvestures, fun and learning. $3.00 for i3 Jetiers, cne a month. Send for circular o a descriptivg, leitsr for e children. ELDER & SHEPARD