The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 28, 1902, Page 6

THE FUNDAY CALL. T wes on Christmas ‘day it hap- I pened—so may be called a Christmas story without violation. San Juan Bautista was bathed in the full glory of a Christmas sun= the Indian neophytes hed bathed in the same All zeslously the good padre had con- ducted the Christmas services unto the least particular and now in the high- welled srens adjoining the church the buill fight wes on. The patio garden was brilllant with its many colored flowers and redolent with the fragrance of them The great sand- stone sundial showed it was one and a helf past noon. In the patio garden had come the padre, the good Father Anselmo. His batk was toward the sundial His thick, strong white hair divided the blackness of his cap and soutane—a benediction of snow between two flecks of night. It was not time that had bieached Anselmo's locks; he had but reached the strength and prime of middle age. A solitary black robed figure he stood, gozing out from the beautiful patio gar- den to the far green valley beyond—up- ward from which a single round white colum of smoke wavered up and up and up, till it touched ine blue of the smiling skies The silence of the garden, lkewise the contemplation of the priest, were dis- turbed by & guttural exclamation of sur- prise and fright An Indian woman—one of the neophytes—hurried past him. He put out his hand to detain her, but she evaded him and fied from the patio. The padre turned quickly to see—if he might—what it wes that could agitate the stoicism of an Indian. Among the follage at the base of the sundial something caught his attention. He stooped to examine it, then touched it to make sure his eyes did not play him & trick. A large crimson flower, flat, broader scross than the palms of his two hands, laughed at him from the topmost end of & woody stem. He stooped lower, examining the soil at its root. The sus- picion of a smile lurked on his lips when he arose; he ‘was saying softly to him- self, “Francisco, thou brave scoundrel, it is thou:” and then, “he must have car- ried it from Santa Barbara™ The fact that & red flower grew in a gerden where was & riot of such color near the whole year round was not of it- eelf a thing to startle or amuse & priest, but the fact of a glowing red poinsettia— which it was—flaunting in the place of his favorite snow-white matilija, which bloomed mot natively in the Christmas time, was & different thing. Father Anselmo was not & superstitiouns man, notwithstanding the superstitious time and clime in which dwelt. His guick mind reverted to.a day in the spring of this same year when the young Francisco on this very spot had impor- tuned him to marry him to the beautiful Carmela, and he had replied to Francisce, peinting to & greet snowy, golden-hearted flower &s he spoke: “When the matilija shall blossom red, my son, you may wed Carmela.” Carmela, the beauty eof the mission lands; Carmels of the tawny hair that should have been black; Carmels of the fair face that should have been swart. Well the padre remembered the day on which she was born—scarce fifteen years 2go.~ A sad day it had been; before the eun had made its round her beautiful young mother lay dead and the husband of the beautiful dead woman looking down upon the courageously smiling infant had growled through his set teeth: be! its hair is gold,” and had shaken his clenched fist in the of the peaceful harbor many leagues eway, where passing ships from the out- side world anchored at long intervals. He had laid the babe in Father Ansel- mo's erms, seying: “Dedicate her to the church,” end he had stepped out of the death chamber of his house and gone, no man knew whither. It was rumored that grief-had driven him to mad suicide. Again was it ru- mored that he bad taken ship on an Eng- lish vessel at the moment of salling and in & great storm in midocean was swept overboard, together with a young Eng- lichman, who Was part owner of the ves- sel and on his way home to his walting wife and children. The body of the Eng- lishman hed been recovered with a deadly gash in the side next the heart, which, it was recorded, must have been caused by striking some sharp object on the ves- sel's €ide or in the water where he fell. The body of the Mexican was not found. Carmela inherited his thirty leagues of jand end ell the kine and horses that grezed thereon. Father Anselmo had glven her to the care of her mother's cousin, the rich and powerful Don Ra- mon, for her bringing up, but never had he lost sight of the trust committed to him. Her land and kine and the horses that had muitiplied upon it would come with her to the church. Thus Carmela’s booklet of life was opened for ber with love and hate and mystery end treachery and tragedy and death and renunclation already inscribed upon its fiyleaf. And she, Carmels, laughed and danced sand sang, the purest and fairest thing the California sun shone on, with no thought of & future, contrary to the padre’s plan- aing, till that day when Francisco boldly made love to ber In the patio garden be- fore the face of the old sundial within earshot of Father Anselmo himself, and changed all the current of her young veins with his impetuous wooing. Like- wise awakened the padre to the realizing it were time she took her vow. It was to be thenceforth, he knew, his reasoning influence against the unreasoning love of Francisco. Francisco, the handsome scapegrace, whose knife was as ready to his hand as words were to his tongue; he that gam- bied many the night till the sun put out the candles, who rode the wildest horses, @id the wildest deeds and thrummed his guiter and sang under Carmela’s window & song ®o0 soft, s0 sweet and clear the mocking-birds listened to catch the mel- ody of it, and who seldom had & real left 6 HERE must be a great flowing river of ink annually spilled in Washington, to say nothing of the forests of cedar and mines of lead and graphite used in pencils, and many tons of horses’ hoofs and of gum arable in the clarified form of mucilage,” re- marked inquiringly & gentleman to a triend in the United States capital the other day. The gentleman addressed, who happened to be 2 contractor for Government sup- plies, replied: “It would be comparative- s easy Lo enswer your question as re- one or two departments, but to fur- nd aggregate total would stump s statistician or expert mathematician In wny one of the bureaus. “The information your question sug- gests is of local end general interest, but the nformation has never been complled is inco: as the job ensurate -with tihe recults. However, ppen to have made your query the subject of recent inwi gation, and I can give you which will be appro amount of correct. The . used by the fifferent de 80 much so that Jf I a hundred gross, more or less, out of the way from ‘he official figures it will make'¥ttle dif- ‘erence. a in his pocket when his clothes were pald for. Yet Father Anselmo loved Francisco well. There was enother who loved Fran- cleco; none less was she than the proud daughter of Don Ramon himself, and third cousin to Carmela. And it was the son of Don Ramon—his only but long and bitterly estranged son—that was the famous toreador who to-day had pitted himself against the bull—the terrible E Toro Diablo—which he was fighting witl its horns unsawed, a thing that had nev er before been done in the Californias. Don Ramon, nursing the unhappiness of his estrangement and long separation from hie son, was, nevertheless, among the spectators, watching the combat with hungry eyes. “These six—the padre, Carmela, Fran- cisco, Don Ramon, his daughter and his son—were the actors in the drama that Christmas day when the miracle came to San Juan Bautista. The hundreds of gor- geously appareled Californians, the hun- dred of semi-civilized neophytes, the soldiers from the barracks, the scouts from the mountains, the few Americans, the few English, Germans, French, Rus- slans, Portuguese, each in the garb of his country or calling—all of these were only the background of the show. A murmur of volices, which deepened to & roar of ap- plause, smote upon the padre's ear. 'he bull fight was on and the sport waxed great. And pretty Carmela, win- #q ne Carmela, she was there among them. BShe had sweetly resisted all the good father's endeavor to make her for- get Francisco, even when Francisco had ‘gone away and left ne word of his gol nor sent back werd »f his retura Carmela, with the confidence of/ youth, had jod in those first weeks of his absence: “If Francisco have not returned when the vespers ring on Christmas day, I will take my vow.” Father Anseimo knew she would keep her word. The day was here, it lacked but & few hours of the time; Franclsco had not come nor sent her word or sign. Yet now as the padre thought of all that rich young beauty and luscious life and love cloistered away forever from the world, he thcught it almost a pity. The vestment of the priest does not shut out thought. Thought is free—the only free thing in the boundless universe. “In the War Department there are used annually about 6882 gross of pens, or 861, 408 pens, 36,500 pencils, 1927 quarts of mu- cilage and 4634 quarts of black ink and 8167 bottles of red ink. “When these figures are digested, the public can draw a conclusion as to what is doing in Washington in only five lines of supplies for the Government. The reams of paper and the thousands of en- velopes consumed can best be imagined, and it runs into the hundreds of thou- eands in 2 year, if not into the millions. The War Department alone uses 650 great gross and 7000 gross of rubber bands. “The Postoffice Department uses 80 many rubber bands that it buys by the thousands of pounds in a bunch, and it consumes about 8250 pounds of these use- ful liftle elastic strips in a year. “In brief, in evidence of the big quan- Sam has to buy 300,000,000 printed use in the depart- ces were asked for department orders paper nds of reams in a single It uses 3500 dozen of in d about %,000 dozen or 240, ary black and colored pen- on, annually. It buys over 13,32 gross of pens, or close to 2,000,000 pens in a year, and about 300,000 penhold- ers, ez one of which is stamped ‘Prop- It was not the usual thing to have & bull fight on Christmas, but it 1s toward the unusual that the mind of the muitl- tude turns; besi this, Christmas feil on Sunday and Sunday was always & day for the bull fight. The mighty bull El Toro Disblo had been brought from s distant misslon to make the sport. He had slain three grizzlies in fair fight, more than & score of horses had he gored to death. And here the most famed toreador in the City of Mexico had coms all the way home to fight him—to fight him under the eyes of his own estranged father Again & tumuit of applause reached the 'UNCLE SAM erty of the U. 8. P. O. Department.” It uses about 12,000 quarts of black ink an- nually and 1,300,000 pounds of small jute twine put up in half-pound balls. Over 9500 steel erasers are annually bid for for use of clerks in the postal system. Over 2,223,000 black carbon sheets of paper are yearly used, mostly in the money order system. Sire “In short, the supplies ordered from Washington for use in the Postoffice De- portment alone keep thousands of opera- tives busy In the various trades all the year round all over the country. “The furnishing of supplies to the Gov- ernment of the kind I speak of is a great business In {tself. If all the ink used in the executive departments was poured down Pennsylvaniz avenue at one time the people would have to take to small boats, while the mucilage used would make a good sized pond, for, in ‘addition to that used in the departments In the usual course of business, all of the hun- dreds of millions of postage stamps an- nually turned out are gummed at the Bureau of Engraving and, Printing, “Millions of pins are used annually. If all the pencils and penhoiders were piled into a heap in the White Lot they would make & fine big bonfiré on a cold night. The average person does not see a thumb tack in a year, yet the Interior Depart- ment orders these flat-headed little brass by JWadge JNorvris ear of the padre, and through it and above it plerced the shrill scream of a woman. Father Anselmo walked quick- 1y to the side of the patio next the arena and unlocking a small door in the wall he stepped Into the dark narrow open- ing. At the farther end of it was another door, in the top of which was fixed a white cross. Over and under the arms of the cross the sunlight came into the wall, - but penetrated only a few inches into the seven feet depth of adobe. Only the priest knew of this door: from the arena it appeared but a cross in a niche in the wall. Standing where he was the padre could see while remaining tacks, used by draftsmen and to tack down blotters, in lots of 3000 dozen at a time. “The Interlor Department is one of the largest in the city and it uses annually 146,000 lead penciis, 6925 gross of steel pens, 6000 quarts of black ink and 2500 quarts of mucilage. ““The Treasury Department and the other departments use supplies i rela- tive proportion to the figures I have given you. Supplles of the kind men- tioned are ordered by the gross and by the thousand gross in a Jump. When it 1s remembered that these great quantities of supplies are mostly consumed in Wash- ington and are renewed every year, some faint idea may be obtained as to what the grand aggregate amounts to at the close of every fiscal year on June 30.” —_——— It is well known that the Moors are Anveterate coffee drinkers, especially the merchaats, who sit in their bazaars and drink coffee continually during the day It has been noticed .that almost invari- ably when these coffee drinkers reach the age of 40 or 45 their eyesight begins to fail, and by the time they get to be 50 years of age they become blind. One iIs forcibly impressed by the nurhber of blind men that are seen about the streets of the eity of Fez, the capital of Moroceo. It is invariably attributed to the exces- sive use of coffee.- This vpinion has been confirmed by the opinion of European physicians living there. % THE BELLOW ENDED 1N A QUAV E=ING himself unseen. Let it not be sald of Father Anselmo that he looked upon the sanguine sport In secret for the ap- petite of his pleasure. It was not he 2 S 2 a2 S O 2 2 S 2 + 3 RIVERS OF INK AND MUCILAGE USED BY THE. DIFFICULTIES MAHOGANY forest is truly a for- est—but not of mahoganies. There Will be many trees—hundreds of square miles of them, of so close a growth that the sun's rays rarely reach the ground—but of these, few will be the stately, high-arched Mellacea. Widely scattered, they stand regally alone, and usually, in difficult situations. Comceive a perfect shaft, prone upon the breast of a steep hill, squared with an ax five feet on a side at the butt, four feet oh a side at the top, and 50 feet long. It may be worth several thousands of dollars in the United States or Canada, and the larger the pieces in which it is shipped, the more it is worth. Yet this must be cut into shert lengths because of the impossibility of moving it In its present form; and even if it ‘could be moved, it could never be floated down the narrow, tortuous stream, or, even if this were possible, it could not be loaded aboard ship for its 2000-mile journey to ‘the North. This strikes the impressionable beholder as almost a tragedy. And the waste! Not more than a fourth of the useful parts of this exquisite tim- ber ever reach a market. Splendid trees are girdled and forgotten, or abandoned for some other reason. The roots and & four (or more) feet of the stumps contain- "Bl TORO DIASLY eVALLLL that had planned the architecture of the mission buildings, nor did he ques- tion the wisdom of those who did; who would reclaim the savage must have much espionage over him. It was the first time that Anselmo had set eyes on the far-famed El Toro Diablo —it" must be written they kindled with sdmiration. A splendid animal, larger than his kind, clean-limbed, the color of dark blood; not so much as a hair of any other shade of color upon him. His horns, from the wrinkles, darkening outward all their polished length, were black as eb- ony at the points and sharp as the gaffs on a chicken’s spurs. Two minutes ago they had plunged through the body of a horse; plowed up the ground beneath it, and hooked it aside. His strength was satanic. He stogd In the middle of the arena tossing his head In magnificent defiance at the throng circled above him. The expres- sion of his eyes was terrorizingly human. Buch a bull as Jupiter turned himself into, the padre thought. Boldly had it been said of him that he was a devil and no animal at all but in shape, and thus had he been named. . His great neck was covered with the gay fluttering banderillas; the sharp ends O SHRILL, of them gigged securely Into his thick hide. They fluttered from his sides and the top of his back as well, and goaded him to bellowing rags. He had many . gashes on his body. His sleek halr was solled with dust and biood. Five horses he had run through in this fight; with the last one the toreador had saved his own life by a second of tin It was then that & woman had screamed. The gate swung open, the toreador rein- ing a fresh horse came into the ring again. Again El Toro Diablo tossed his long curving horns and lunged to the bat- tle. A shout greeted the toreador. He flaunted his red flag and made his feints and passes; once he gave El Toro Diablo a good spear thrust in the flank, once the tip of a horn ripped the flank of his horse. Father Anselmo, watching the fight from his hidden vantage of view, felt his subconscious self slipping away to his own far Spain, to his fleeting vanished youth, to another buil fight, and a day that ended disastrously. A thousand-throated murmur of sus- pense brought him back alert to the pres- ent. Something had happened. Horse and toreador were down. EI Tore Dia- blo’s horns were dripping blood and when he lifted them again the mightiest torea- dor of the Western Continent lay limply cross-wise at the back oilthum, one ln: clinging weakly to one slippery horn. mux--wmuwmd-mmum circle of the bull ring. From a seat in the place of honor, the rich, the powerful old Don Rameon, the guardian of Carmela, rose to his feet and shouted with all the strength of his voicet “The hand of Carmels and thirty leagues of land to the man whe will save my son.” Before his voice had echoed from the mission wall down from somewhers in the packed crowd a youth hung by his hand & moment to the lowest round of seats, then dropped lightly to the ground. A broad-brimmed, gold-trimmed sem- Brero was on his head, a rich velvet cloak around his shapely shoulders. ‘His hna& yme face, his sinuous grace an: :, apparel were a goodly sight. His shoes were the finest,.the luster of his white silk stockings, wrinkled at the an- es, shone through gold lacings en the his velvet lel: loons. The heavy fringes on r silk sash hung to the knee om either side. vest under his short velvet jacket. But all his brave attire would only serve te bamper his movements. He threw off his sombrero, deftly caught the velvet cloak from his shoulders to his left arm, threw a kiss to Carmela and taking & doubls edged viclous looking was red between them, A silence fell upon the place—a silence that was louder than speech. The sunlight flashed across his face as “Mother of Godl” eried Father Anselmo, “it is Francisco.” Two maidens sitting side by side, Car- mela and her handsome, haughty cousin, each sent up a silent prayer. Carmela prayed: “Holy Mother of Christ, let him harmed and I will give myself to thy service.” Beside her, with eyes fastened on Fraa- eisco, her cousin prayed: “If he be not *for me, let him not live for Carmela.” Seeing a new antagonist El Toro Diablo shook the faintly strugsling toreador from his head. He lashed his heavy tall and bellowed a hollow roar that had in It, so the people said afterwards, the laugh of demons and the glee of the ocean when ships go down. Francisco steadied himself and held the velvet cape ready to throw across the eyes of the bull. A thought thrust fitself into the mind of Father Anselmo: Should Francisco be slain, there would be no ob- stacle between Carmela with her large estate and the church. There is no divi- sion of time minute enough to measurs & thought. It was gone before Father An- selmo had realized its presence and in its lace In letters of fire: “Thou shalt not " He wrenched the cross from Iits fixture and burst the frall door open and, _with the white cross held high above his head, leaped into the bull ring. ‘Whatever eise he intended to do, if sught at all, he did not. There.was a tremble from end to end of the circle of seats, clods rattled from the adobe walls and the bell in the Mission tower clanged the sunset summons to prayer while it ‘was yet but mid-afternoon. All this hap- ned in the same short minute. The bel- w of El Toro Diablo ended in a shrill quavering walil; he trembled in every muscle; the gaudy.banderillas quivered on his neck; his clean cut limbs gave way and his huge body sank upon them; one of his beautiful bloody horns snapped at the skull when it struck the compact earth. Father Anselmo, being a scholar, was famillar with the theories of seismic vi- brations; he likewise had one entirely his own for the death of El Toro Diablo, but held his peace. In gratitude for the miracle that saved the life of his son, Don Ramon honored his word and the reward he had offered was given to the church—Carmela and all. But the padre without excuse or ex- planation absolved the malden from her Yow. ; When the Angelus its golden chimes that Christmas night he heard in its message of divinity an undertone of human love. e ———— About 150 prominent Chinese business men met in the hall of the United Chi- nese Soclety at Honolulu recently and or- ganized a political good government club. It was not decided which party the or- ganization would affiliate with. The main purpose is to secure the rights of the members as American citizens. The pres- ent members are either naturalized citi- zens of Hawall or pative born. ik e e R e 9 IN UTILIZING A MAHOGANY FOREST ing the most beautiful of waving, curled veneering material of great dimensions, are utterly neglected because there are no means provided for handling them. There is a fortune in the stumpage alone, in one of these forests, under intelligent and economical management. Great limbs, too, aggregating twice the amount of the stem and of equal utility as timber, are allowed to rot untouched where they fail; and last, but not least, not a sign of re- planting or of cultivation. - First destruc- tion; then abandonment. And in thinking of this, it must be remembered that where mahogany grows, there too grows coco- bolo, the wood which is as beautiful as rosewood, dark red, shaded and limned with black, as heavy as boxwood and so valuable that 1t is used oniy for the most exclusive purposes. Rubber trees also ars common, wild and indigenous in a mahog- any forest, and are treated in the same thoughtless way as is everything else, d in lumbering are of —an ax of a strange unwieidy form, a two-man sa blocks and tackle, and oxen or & power. Not a derrick, a steam boiler or a sawmill within a week's jorney; not even rollers, except of the roughest. And yet individual trees are worth what it would cost to build an industrial for fuel, the tops of the felled trees alone would furnish enough and to spare. When felled, squared and cut Into lengths, the sticks are hauled by ecattle, Inch by fuch, to the nearest stfeam which is large enough to float them during high water. This hauling must usually be in the rainy season In order (save the mark!) that the ground shall be slippery and furnish its own lubrication. The cat- tle are a sad lot; rather small, but well locking enough when they are first set to work, but what a change in the two months! Worn to skin and bone and c ered with galls and cpen sores where the eggs of insects have been deposited and nurtured. These wretched beasts typify and express the whole mistaken method as nothing else could. The smaller streams, which the logs first enter, are mere dry cracks in the country, with an occasional stagnant pool, during mest of the dry season, but when the ral have lasted for a fort- night they become torrents and, except the very smailest, will float the largest loge. Exactly as in our own pine and hemlock forests, the logs gradually fina their way to some river where there is less current and more water, and here they are caught by a “boom,” collected (narrow . into rafts, and so to the sea and the hold gauge) railway to some large stream. And of a ship. 4 * i