The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 6, 1904, Page 13

THE SAN FRANCISCO SU DAY CALL. - of fiction; they e they are shanghailng going I'mah mweh patient myself since hree months ago,” said I T wish I ew myself. Let's wire and find out je was in the midst of one of the mos ling offices in £ biggest, most e roar surges in at r that even a ch separate into its component of wagons d J" trains and mobiles and sub- rs and a ratsed a strong, ward the window se away. hear - he waves of my old f he sa ng of cordage eat waves he d buz- s in ome b a bells a r reading as shoes and rned out in Massachu- New York has gobbled many h thé buoy- the and wants tired wonder she saw th delight when t with the salt gling with the e born San Francisco?” say so. I knew every ship r front from the time I nough to walk alone,” he told I lived among those old vessels a heir crews. The men all knew me. Where's the kid?' they'd ask as soon they were in port. awhile my family lived in San ALBERT I SN /o WIIERE HE WRS Zarcr nd the keen thing to * FE Lorror. oF C EXCELsICE. iked the ssed the wat sea f nk that all was wasn't by for it couldn’t went to It was a prim write, t what one is wr’ of smatterings books wa the are Boston or itively direct thing = true interpreter. idea entered his head he was_too age. So he content time with getting which he print ely on his own little hand press. T contained 2 tales that he had heard oiit magazines, ese he uttered the last drew a Hardly word when the pirate captain small, sharp dagger and was about to plunge it into the boatswain's heart, when kicked it his hand. While stooping to pick it up the pirate sprang upon his back. “Twisting his arm around he stab- bed’the rascal in the breast, who with Campbell out of a groan relaxed his hold and fell to the floor.” This is a specimen of one of the palpitating tales that appeared in se- rial form in Excelsior, which you may pot know was being published in San Francisco in 1891, when its editor was 12. He went to school in Oakland. Some ©Oakland boys were going camping and wanted Sonnichsen to join them, but he did pot like their way of living the out of doors life. “They had tents and complete cook- ing outfits,” this young savage told me, scornfully. T OF AGE -~ Lnfertal T Py S So he picked up then one of the friends of his life, a Cherokee boy, and the two congenial spirits started according to their own fashion and hearts. They took no tent cooked by whatever sort of a fire they could make in the woods of Sonoma County and they wore only such garb as necefsity demanded and they trapped and killed and sold their prey to the ranchers near by. When the rains drenched them they sought shelter at some ranch, but they hied back to the woods as soon as they could in safety. They sold coon skins and deer skins and they lived on the meat of what they killed. It was as near savagery as Sonnich- sen could get, therefore he was happier than at any other time, except during those days when he rode the Pacific in the Don Adolfo and saw wonderful happenings that he promised himself to weave one day into a book. It was on his first sea trip, while he was 16, that he saw the incident of Pedersen’'s re- venge, which is now stored away in a little yarn called “The Saga of Trig Olafsen.” Pedersen was the bucko mate of a ship bound from Australia, and he was cordially hated by the meén of the Glory of the Seas, as the ship was named. The mate was obliging enough y/ ral Y e Zoly- - - to fall everboard one morning and the men were all blihd to the fact, looking everywhere except in the direction of the drowning man. The ship went on to Honolulu, reported the man lost, and the whole crew was cheerful again when in walked the mate. They had left him swimming in midocean—was this his ghost? The mate seized a handspike and laid about him. The sailors fled in as many directiens as there were men, but every one of them was cabtured. “] saw them when they reached San Francisco,” says Sonnichsen, “and there wasn’t one of them that didn't lsave the vessel in the hospita! launch. Pedersen was a terror. Thers must be plenty of San Franciscans that remem- ber him.” “What ever became of the old Don Adolfo?” “She was sold as unseaworthy in Honolulu. But before that I weathered a white squall with her in the tropics. “That's the kind of experience that a man never forgets. These squalls are as sudden as a flash of lightning, so quick that you don’t know what's hap- pened before it’s all over. The ship was lying at anchor in a tropical water when the burst of wind struck her and she was capsized. The water burst in through her cabin portholes. “We men thought that the last day had come for us. We were huried against each other. Men yellad. I re- member being thrown through space and darkness. Then came. the water. We clung to anything we could cling to, and the waves were lashing us and they were angry. All of a sudden the old ship did the queerest thing. She righted herself like a worm that turns, as much as to say, e stood enough of the impudence of this storm,” and we found everything right side up with care again. “That was one of the seventecn times I've missed drowning. I.don't call it a miss unless I am near thing to remember that | kee partner of mine and want to be back in the woods with him. It's a queer thing, isn’t it? Those days come into my d whenever I'm about to 1 always think all in one instant of the time I shot him, taking his mo- tion in the leaves that of an animal He pulled through all right. It would havé been a sorry day for me if he hadn't.” The murder of a bucko mate oc- curred on the ship he was on and the story of it was told him next day by the murderer. It was a horrible thing.’ The sailor was a sworn enemy of the mate, for no good or obvious reason, and the ex- planation that he made to Sonnichsen was that “he wanted to see how a bow-legged man would swim.” The mate was absurdly bow-legged and the sailor was evidently delighted with the result. He rejoiced in the humor of the situation with the joy, of some demon. He used a draw bucket to stiffie the victim's cries, jamming it over his head, and he reveled in the strange antics of the dying man, squealing that he looked like a chicken with its head cut off. At the end of these adventures Son- nichsen decided that he was ready to settle down, and he refurned to San Francisco to take up newspaper work. “I was on the staff of The Call for three whole days,” he says. “I don't know what my duties were—I didn’t have time to find out. On the third day a man said to me, "‘Want to go to the Philippines on a transport? I said, ‘Yes,’ and I went to the manager and resigned my position. “What on earth’s the matter?’ he asked me. T'm off again,’ I told him. *“So I went to the Philippines and was held a prisoner for ten months. During part of that time I almost starved. Once I went for three days without food. With a friend I was ac- cused of being a spy and the two of die. HOW-LITERARY- NEW -YORK: HAS - CAPTURED 5 - CALIFORNIA-BOY into a Sfithy than feels to be con- This young Amer- our de: th ican and passed. separate cells and a days, each of u I had We were matter over. the horror of and steadily & night I slept ex t good spi , Tea to die a drar death. I became very much ested in wond have seemed t ing happened. We never inside of the m er message wh I carried in low 6f my bamboo stick for many miles, being dk e bolo sh the jungles. 26th ¢ cers of the Ore but the t last. He tells these tales and m in the same matter-of-course way you might tell of a stroll or a day’'s shopping. He lay at death’s door in a miserably equipped hospital. He hid in bushes and swam dangerous streams to avold detection by natives. Besides all these experiences in the Pacific and the Philippines, he has sailed the seas of the world. was the only American that ever sailed in an argosy. It was an old steamer bought by merchants in Russia, and a crew was shipped in England. Sen- nichsen sailed in the midst of a Babel, for no two men aboard were.of the same natlonality. “And I've pulled through it all, you see,” he sald. “I suppose I'll always pull through. And I have turned up in civilization again.” “Will you als- tion?” He listened a moment to the consol- idated roar of the “L" trains and the surface cars and the wagons and the automobiles and the subway blastings and again he made the motion of pust ing it all away. But he did not answer. Sonnichsen still refuses to look upon New York as home, even though his work has made it necessary for him to live here part of the time. But he con- siders himself a prisoner in a New York “compartment,” where he boards, and frets for the outdoor life that he has never really given up. Just now he has a little studio in an apartment- house near the park, and he may be found in all kinds of weather tramping up and down the loneliest stretches of turn up In civiliza- AL EER T SO L7rESsT ZROTO. L fishing him. He has a or the sort of man that tdoor 1 have, terests care for an almost een the men of s theories. “Mental 2 physica se. He has I for theg sake t bock came out he was society and he has been cabin of S8an Francisco be- to the old consulate out at and Howard streets, where sen, his Norway las Sonn he was nsul for Sweden, boy was borm although he calls himself he would have a hard world try for him to clai after all his rovings which have nar- rowed it so wonderfull —_—————— How Habits May Be Changed. is a What shall be said conc rning the bad ha A eady become fixed have been growing mger for y to expect that they can be co telr changed in a short time This is no easy undertaking. Habits can be broken only in the same way that they have been acqu red; and that is by practice. Those whyg have strong will er we m=y help to succeed in g fromw the bondag: of habits quickly. With others we must be pre- pared to labor bard and lonc ng resolution; by careful lest the old"habit assert it- determiped fighting against to do that which is ding thouglits, persons which a“e tie cause of the ; by keeping busy all the performing years temptation time; and, when powsible, acts the oppesite of the habit to be broken; by never becoming discour- aged. Thus, and only thus, can any .habit, when once firmly - -blished, be replaced by a bettgr ope.