The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 20, 1904, Page 7

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. «© ght, 1903, by McClure, Phillips & Co.) were two James Disons— inent respectability in & f the Empire State, 1t other f the boys” aughty city of New York. These ntiemen possessed a metaphysi- ty other and al- James Dison the metropolis is, James Dison of the city © ‘one ¢ each Wh went to with eceived his letters and in particular, letters the little ¥, in ®e ingisted, very prop- er eagerness to return to the . her society, and added ce ta s s nstrating th even ¢ absence his thoughts were of . of that com munit for tk ¢ courtesies ropolis, when James Dison revisited is accus- e it his practice to sign naughty city cer ks ayment of bills which . double had con- greenbacks February, 18- e and the e universe owed a living. of his pleasures he erse owed him, t scov it for the most s of other people, p for the other peo- ght to his own. e when James Dison was f it, Burke Ryan saw F and surmised his nd stock of his roll of hi ner and gesture of ze son entered the bathhouse Iso entered it. He had not Turkish bath, but he took £ really wanted was to e little sum which was com- and to go to bed. When gered at breakfast Burke also reakfast, though with a patience at the prolix eti- odern timee. Dison entered the trolley car red it and took a place hough he had no busi- the city to which that tleman was gding. When Disc nis watch transferred it- eelf to tcoat; when Dison woke he disco d in his trousers t two longest and deftest s right hand. Burke o obliging as to withdraw nd w them the remnant 1l of bills. i Burke by the shoulder and =5 mind with vigor and jdior were two women and twe car. The two wome seed the judgment of e s e PCOR BURKE WAS MADE » ONE S TARSGET POR TRE > = -SHTLY - THROWN AN S o St AT ATMED < their sex upon t tion imarticu- lately top of he the twer with one urched toward Burke duced remarkat Meantime & to which he « that he had lost his watch. and the attention o d RGN - a car. Everybody, Disoi When nes Dison of the evinced a sudden interest city discovered that he had the sireet; the over themselves watch the t step he took in regard in the en forgot even t of 1 for- got th to the door and used th 1dow. The last to de pla was the metdrm proach seemed to afilict in- sanity. As a preliminary to jv ng off he turned on the current gind when the car was bounded forward at full speed he leaped. He did not wait to hold by the handles and steady himself before his fe touched the ground; he just naturally got off and did gymnastics. 'h(—". he was picked up afterward he explained that he had been in a hurry. “Stop thief!” the road. “Go to hell!” grinned Burke. “Find a telephcne,” said one of the crowd, while another called on a man on a bicycle to “catch that car,” and explained that there was a thief on it. When they explained also the nature of the thief and of his company the bicyclist guessed he was tired and that they might catch the car themselves. “If any of you gentlemen wants the loan of my wheel he can have it said generously; “but for me Friday. It's always bad luck for me to catch stolen trolleys on Friday.” None of the gentlemen wanted the loan of his wheel. Burke left the trolley soon. In front of the one house visible stood a hcrse and buggy, which he halted the car to borrow, saying that he needed*them in his business. A minute afterward he had disappeared. yelled the chorus in 'HOW TO TRAIN irable. The first step, to to stand still and medi- his m ysical double of the other ftair should cient re should employ his in- alignable ri of pertinent scandal. He escaped with all possible haste from the witnesses of his mischance and de- clined te give his name. Dison’s second step was to sel out the front office and obtain a private interview with the chief; and here for a moment he made a blunder. He had the temerity to demand a favor be- fore be had founded its indispensable basgis in friendship. The chief paused in the midst of his scrutiny of a pile of documents: cfficial business was sus perded everywhere within earshot, and Mr. Dison listened to the voice of au- thority. The chief was a man of wrath; his speech was rude apd his figure of rhetoric unconventional. “Ni I will not. You will take your chances llke anybody else. I will keep nothing quiet. Every dashed up-State son of a hayrick thinks he can come down here and play the goat and go back home an’ forgit it. If my town's tough it’s you hoosiers that come down here and turn yourselves loose an’ make it so. And it’s me the newspa- pers roas At naughty city was inspired to remember this point James Dison of the that James Dison of the good littié city owned a block of delegates at the State He recited his titles the Great Great Per: to e nect Personage. I don’t care who'you ate or who you thundered the Olympian in a passion of rectitude that made him su- perior to mmar;. “'T don't owe you money nor anybody else; you can go I'm not put here to do fa- I'm putihere to execute the law, and you bet vbur life 'l do it!” was diplomacy. There are forms t Republie which n to interpret; initiated. The st exalted friéndship t Personage Mr. Dison pad named. 1t was custor of Great Persouage fronr time to tis when he suffered with the spleen, to speak his mind to the chief with an un- reserve which made the chief's eyes water—with affection!” When Mr. Dison onage. and mentioned chief had the me had withdrawn from the Front Ofllce, the chief made the telephone wires hum with hurry-up calls to trusted lieutenants with names suggesting that gifted race whose people can govern everybody except themselves. When Mr. Discen returned with his creden= tials his reception reminded him that Mr. Dison of the other place was not the only man in the naughty city who is blessed with a metaphysical double. “Have already moved in that matter of yours, Mr. Dison; an accldent that might happen to any gentleman.” “Even to an up-State son of a hay- rick!” said the facetious Dison. “1 will have your property delivered to you at 9 in the morning at your hotel,” said the chief; “and meantim: if there are any little corners of the city that you would like io look into I shall b- glad to place a competent guide at your disposal.” “] might find some things that would be of service to me in directihg our home intevests; 1 am active'y employed in local affairs,” said Mr. Dfson. “Happy to be able to do anything for you I can,” sald the chief, offering the glad hand. ' “A nleasure to have made your ac- quaintance,” said Mr. Dison, accepting the glad hand. This also was diplomacy; the rest was business. The chief’s face when he met personitied. - He nuragd a dozen powers and potentates - by their nomes de gyerre and indicAted their customary placés of resort. His instructions figurative: ‘‘Rake this town with a fire-tooth comb; I want 'em here by 1 If they don't understand kind- ress, ninch ‘em There is a wireless telegraph sy: in the Under World which is qu effective as Marconi's, and it was soou noised about among the guns that thre was to be a round-up at the Front Of- fice. The interview took place in th chief’s private office. “Curly,” he asBed in con tcoes, addressing the man from “what @o yow Kkmow 'bout ‘the touch that was pulled off over in Jersey morning on the trolley? Somebod stem e ds de “a thimble (watch) and a roll o’ dough.” “First I've heard of it, chief., I don't krow nothin’, It's up to you, McKlowd." m dead about it, toc, chief. Just got out abed a little while before Cur found me.” “How about vou, Billy?” “Dead, too. Keeps me busy keepin’ track o' touches this side of the river.” “Well, a touch came off, an’ 1 want the thing cleared up. I'll give it to you fellcws straight—the touch never should 'a’ come off, an’ it's up to me to get the gun an’ the things. I've got you up here to read the riot act to you, an' you'd better read it to the rest o’ the gang. I've been easy on some o yeu blokes ‘cause I know that you've gat families here ah’ want to stay with ‘em, but I'll tell: you on the level that if you don’t coush up that gun I'll put a dead line a “this whole town. Now, you can $&ke your choice. That's all I've got to say.te you; but T want you, McKlowd, to wait a little.” The consultation with McKlowd was ghort but significant. “Ruderick, I might as well give you the truth as a steer. The sucker that was tcuched jg a friend o' his Nibs— you know who I mean—an’ his Nibs is hostile.. It's the second time that he's had a grouch on ar’ I've got to put up a good front. If -the thing don't go right T'll be in a hell of a hole, an’ I want to kpow if yeu'll pull it through. 1 can’t get that gun inside of a month if you blokes don't help me, an’' I've capital and was high in the graces of a his lieutenants was a hurry-up order kept the sucker here in town on the plea that it'll 21l be over in a day or two. Wil ush to coug I 1 you an’ nds to reason rouch on , it st ' to get a if you an’ the push do me a faver, don't hours you y twenty- didn't you tke my rep @ : better if twelve.¥ So long, R as popular at his push view front m th his rec but ‘there were somw it, which the m 2 tand. The than once de- ‘Ruderick had oniy had he would have ranked if eddication’ an among the salubrious men of history It was the nion of Ruderiek’s inti- mates that he had made a mark en- viably high without taking the doctor’s degree; but, of course, they judged him by a standard of their own. The chief’'s liking for Ruderick w appre- ciated and respected. In the days when the chief had been struggling for honor and promotion in “the street” it fell to his lot to arrest certain “gentlemen of fortune” who protested with knife and fist. The chief might never have come out of the scrimmage alive if Ruderick hadn’t “happened around” about that time. The chief, to his credit be it said, never forgot this coincidenee. “How much time we got, Ruderick?"” asked Billy the Bruise “Twenty-four hour: “He jus' wants the thimble an' the roll, ain't that it?” : he wants the gun, too. His Nibs is hostile, you see, an' this yap from the country's got the pull, an’ it's up to the chief to make a plunge.” “Will he let the bloke go?" “Didn’t say nothin’ "bout that. P'r- *aps he will after he's let the yap rub- ber at him. I don't give a damn whether he does or not. It was a bunglin’ job an’ the bloke deserves a o Qo \ stretcher. Besides, see all the trouble he’s givin' us. He'll queer the whole of us if we don’t get him.” “Tha right,” commented Billy. “No one bloke's got any business queerin’ the push; if he has got to take a stretcher then he has, an’ tha all there is about it. Well, T tell you, Ruderick, I'l serew my nut'down- town an’ rubber around, lettin’ the blokes know what's doin’. You'll put the people up here next, will you? A'right. Where'll we report?” “Up in my rooms.” The two men separated and began “putting the biokes next.” Ruderick dropped into saloon after saloon. ta Ing quietly with men sitting at tables or standing at the bar, and pretty soon these men were to be seen coming out on ;the street and taking diff di- rections. Ee talked to the 1 n language unique for its abbreviations and directness. There were long explanations. The simple statement backed up by Ruderick’'s presence, that “The Front Office wanted know who made that toueh in Jerssy, and wanted the swag and gun,” sufficed to g an unequal ective There were no silly inspect “the rsey ters about the to no long inter scene suggested ¢ wires hot.” conditions strolled quistly rubberin Manhattan, time « 1 : people “next Ome would enter a “joir give a cough and pass ¢n to a rear room where he was joined by those whom his cough had attracted ‘Find out who got that thimble an’ the roll on the trolley over in Je the chief is hostile an’ wan w—Roderick McKiowd is on t} haif dozen recr honor of the chi Gossip about tial to the U about marriages and births t per World. Burke Ryan could no more forego the ple telling his pals about the “t trolley in Jer- sey than he ¢ d resist th e mn to “pull it He had “hec ¥ the watch and invested the greater part of the roll in a quiet little game of poker by the time Ruderick McKlowd and the push were o trail, and he had also e details of the k and his compan- ric sached the “joints™ had been told. At the hat Ruderick and Billy e agreeing on the ¢am- Burke was in a sa- locks distant he had to “clear the deck’ on the trolley with his razor to make good his “mooch,” and giving them amusing accounts of how he “Molls dove out o' the windows" in h to give him room is friends in the push as loon ne tuderick, and there was yerson by name, whe fely up to him" to let Burke Ruderick and his push were in pursuit. Do they jus vant the dough an’ the watch,” asked Burke,. “or are they after me, too?" “They're after you, you duffer,” said Jimm an’ they'll have you if you don’'t meech. You've been chewin’' the rag all over town, an’ somebedy’s told ‘em by this time.” “Do you mean to say that they're goin’ to turn me over to the chief “That's what they e, an’ you'll be settled, too. His Nibs is on his ear, they sav, an’ the chief's got to square thing: “Well, they can go plump to hell I ain't no cker to help out that chief—Ilet him help hi If out I'm goin’ to mooch right"—his speech was cut short by the entrance into the saloon of Ruderick and two “pals.” It was a chase which ‘is talked about still when chases come up for discussion. It began below Twenty- third street and ended in a vacant lot near the Eighth-avenue Railroad terminal, and is probably the only pur- suit of a criminal in whose arrest criminals alone were interested. Trol- ley cars, cabsand the “elevated” were all used by both the pursued and the pursuers, and a flerce struggle ended the fight. As a last resort Burke took his stand in a fence corner of a vacant lot, drew his razor, and dared Roderick and his two companions to touch him. “It's a case o' knock-out,” sald Roder- ick and poor Burke was made the tar- get for stones swiftly thrown and care- fully aimed. He stood it as long as he could, his face and hands being cut and bruised and smeared all over ' with blood, and then cried out: “I cave—I cave!"” “Couldn’'t help it, Burke, old man,"” said Roderick soothingly. “Three to one ain’t fair, but it's business. The chief needs you, an’ we need the chief— see?” ARLY all children seem to be silty of telling e or less faie ] This habit th ost difficult to correct thers are ready to gnation, the statement yiidren ever told a story y few men, noted for their found who will claim oys, they never told any sto- might be iwell for paremts to dor this fact, when they were ¢ to judge harshly a child who has ken the truth. A DIT I t thought, it seems that we « right to expect the truth from on at all times and especiaily jren. But is it such an easy r tell the truth? Is there any £ eason why we should feel shock- € hes a young child tells a false- What do we mean when we say L izht to tell the truth? Do we not mesn that it is the child's duty? t es a young child know about ‘othing, until it has been in- Even then, very little, until reached school age or even later. Matter. Most of us will agree that the incentive to do right, because it is a duty to do so at all times, is such a high incentive that even adults frequently hesitale and many times fail to respond as they should to this moral obligation. A Hard Matter to Punish Properly. How many conseientious parents have been perplexed to know how they should punish a child who persists in telling falsehoods! Mistakes of man- agement here may sgo easily drive a child into becoming a confirmed story teller, not only while a child, but even after he has reached manhood. Some children seem to have no sence of hon- esty whatever. They will tell $storfes without any apparent provocation. Sometimes they will even tell untruths when against their own interests, so that it seems impossible to understand them. Every person of experience has known such. All know that many of these have turned out to be most re- liable men and women. Is it any won- der then that a thoughtful parent ap- proaches this subject prayerfully and with fear and trembling? ‘Why Children Are Untruthful. In early years the distinction be- A WAYWA RD CHILD TO TELL THE TRUTH | T A ¥ ( Twenty-Fourth Talk to Parents by William J. Shearer. l SLI A . B + tween realities and mere fancies of When we consider that the mental please the parent. Is there a parent the mind are not clearly perceived. faculties of children are all very imma- who does not remember such in- Very few adults can tell the exact ture, that their minds arg occupied stances? Is not such desire praisewor- truth about any accident they see, With such a multitude of various kinds thy? Such a child does not reason Nearly every person sometimes stops and hesitates before he is sure whether he really had a certain experience, or whether it is merely a dream. Have we not all sometimes asked ourselves the question, “Did T dream this, or did I read it, or did some one tell me of it several years ago?’ Remembering is simply bringing into our minds images of what has been there before. It is merely another form of imagination. How easy it is for any one, especially a child, to fall to distinguish between the image now in the mind and one which has been prominent in the mind some time in the past! How natural for a chilc thinking of a runaway, to confuse the image now. in the mind with the one that might have been in the mind some time ago. If he does, he would say that he sa\. a runaway and tell all the details he remeémbers from the picture in his mind. He would then be telling what he thought would be the truth, even though it was a falsehood. of sepsations §s to form a bewildering maze, need we wonder that children are ant to handle the truth rather carelessiy? Are there not the best of reasons to justify our being amazed that so frequently they are able to distinguish so well between the images of the true and those of the false, when we purselves can scarcely under- stand how we are able to do so? Other Reasons * Untruthfulness. As children grow older the power to distinguish between images of the present and the past should become stronger. It is therefore necessary to look for other explanations of seem’ 3 untruthfulness. Do not parents and others tell children fairy stories for the sake of pleasing them? They do not expect children to believe them, so that in one sense they are not untruth- ful. Now, suppose a child is asked whether he was kind to his little sis- ter. so much because of fear of conse- quences as because he dislikes to dis- He may answer that he was, not" deeply. He does not analyze. He can- not. Sometimes the parent will playfully say to a chiid, “I am a big bear and I am going to eat you,” and many such expressions. Thid is all right. It Is not wrong. The child knows that he is just playing., Yet the images in the child’s mind will be so real that the child will run in great fear. It is, in- deed, very hard for any child with a vivid imagination to readily distin- guish between images. Need we won- der that they draw on their imagina- tions when talking to others? Even Parents Make Mistakes. Sad to relate, many parents make it very hard for their children to be truth- ful. How often they promise, but do not fulfill their promises. The worst of it is, many times they have no idea of fulfilling their promises. Sometimes a parent will, in the presence of children, welcome most cordially some unexpect- ed and undesired caller. It has been re- ported that, after the doors are closed, all manner of unkind things are said in the hearing of the children. How often is this the case? What a terrible example for children! One little girl, on being told to go to bed as soon as some callers left, said, “'O, please let me stay up, I want to hear what you say about them!” Many times children perceive that parents are deliberately lying about something. Other times, at least, it is.said parents tell the children to inform unwelcome - visitors that they have gone down the street or are not at home. Sometimes the parent will, de- liberately, and with the knowledge of the children, conceal things from the other parent, and not hesitate to tell untruths concerning the matter. Some cases are even worse than the above mentioned, but thesé are bad enough. Under such circumstances is it any wonder that children have little idea of the importance of telling the truth? Need we be surpriged that under such training. children soom learn to deceive even more successfully than their par- ents?"’ Important Conclusions. Don’t imagine that children naturally tell the truth. They must be trained to do so, as they would be trained in any other desirable habit. Parents should not expect them to be trained e by harsh knocks, which so often result. The parent should not feel too much worried if a young child is-continually telling stories. The femedy lies in pro- per training. If a child shows great fear of the consequences, the parent should ca fully consider whether the consequen- ces have not been too severe in the past. Is it net true that. very often, children are drivem into telling un- truths by the mistakes which the par- ents 'have made In punishing false- hoods? The young child who tglls an un- truth should not be punished severely, if at all. What such a child needs is the right kind of instruction: not.pun- ishment in anger. He should have an explanation of the evils resulting from a continuance of such practices, if he is not too young. hen a child does tell the truth, u trying ecir- cumstances. too much approval cannot be given. By stories concorning truth- ful children &nd in var ther ways, no effort should be spared to train children so that they will get in the habit of telling the truth. Finally, let the parent be sure that they not only encourage their children to tell the truth, but that they show them how to do so.