The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 24, 1904, Page 15

* THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. 04, by Central News and ss Exchange. : advice of a friend who knows an interesting.book when he finds one, I have been dipping The Creevey Papers,” edited lerbert Maxwell, and published by . John .M and have ne herefore, some useful knowl- h ple € ment. s v m everybe a that vs 1 buy expensive kr ne dear old ge unds make a why t was no g : £ myself with . w tempting to f ssages He but A great I once gainst in and see thenm get a hea I sha yothing = have a gen 1 sit. down sen’s tw she knows is that skip so m her night ens to reason, i€ ca- ther side of the f give and take page a gas minute hoping “Put it noth- the from e light urge her are still y to get the down while upon it we ing ahout the unfortunate people rouna about you” *“Don't,” she answers, “now you've made me lose my place.” The music worries her. When they let down the curtain and turn up the lights, she is happy. The Creevey Papers is’not a book to be taken up and read straight through. Tt avould be like sitting down to. read through “Pepys’' Diary™ or the “Percy Anecdotes.™, I heard of a man once who, searting at page one and fin- isking at page four hundred and thir- teen, read thro conscientlously, not missing a line, a work entitled “One Thousand and One Gems of British Humour.” Like poor King Henry, he never smiled again. It was not the fauit of the bo it was the fault of the darned fool himself. The bobk was n exhaustive, comprehensive compen- . I have never heard a joke be- fore or since that was not in it. On the shelves of thousands of hard working and women it remains to this day, me a valued and serviceable friend. But e Betsy Prigg’'s bottle, it should be reached down only when the reader feels so disposed. This man sat down before the fire with took it up to bed with him, read it through without a break, one gem of British humar after another. It is alphabetically arranged, commencing. with the free translation f a Hebrew joke against Adam and ending with a witty anecdote told by a famous statesman in the course of a speech advocating the adoption of an verein. T argest divi- nder the letter C, which contains 1l the jokes ever made about cats and all the funny t} that have ever been or that ever w said by childr But D, embracing all the best known ish humor con- ed with dogs, runs it pretty close. n, after a merry evening, when have sat around recounting beginning: 1 must tell _you what Georgie said the other night,” or , speaking about retriever dogs,” ve reached this book down from its shelf 1 mirably indexgd, the fully arranged and proper subsections, rarely fail to trace Georgie s r what _ the re- r did, to its original source. But, I have said, it is a book to be dipped , not read. “The Creevey Pap is a book to be read for half am hour and then laid down ag: It ha ot the spice of the “Greville Memoirs” nor the charm of “Lord Hervey's Reminiscences.” Her- vey was a keen observer, a feariess dis- sector and a brilliant. man of letters, Creevey was merely an amusing Paul v, & gossip-menger of the valet or- But the valet is of more service the student of history than he ever to gets the credit of being. To his valet, it is said, no man is a hero.” When the hero mounts his prancing horse he dis When the valet's view. him he is Y f one wishes to under- stand man d it is necessary to know t only the hero but the man. To act the hero on the s > with the ‘dime- light turned upon one i$ comparatively 2 The ctor can be a hes off the stage ut-it does not fol- of necessity; the A man can t field and yet be 3 2 o'clock in the m hen d lion tam f the forest two things are crouching behind while his terma- e outside the cage exclaims, out, you coward!" is quite a natural character Belisarius and the Duke of Marlborough in their own ho: of es carried meekness to the verge imbecility. Statesmen, excellent at teaching firmness to a nation, have proved themselves mere fretful children when face to face with personal dis- appointment. If the proper study of nkind be man, the study must be complete. We want to know how our philogophers behaved when suffering from the toothac Of course there reader who should 1 certain class of attempt biog- would rather mnot Jearn v, an art student once told me. “Knowing what the firm flesh was made of—the structure of the shapely limbs—the cause of nature's wondrous red and white upon a young girl’s face —would rob me of all delight fn my work. For such knowledge is harm- ful. But the scientist demands it. If history is to be of any service to us the wart must be‘palntfld as well as the It is useful to know that flashing eye. riyle once threw the bacon at his wife. “After hearing that,” says my irritable city friend, “I take no more interest in Carlyle. Who is he to teach me philosophy? * * * The bad tem- pered old gentleman, of what use is he to the world?” * * * “My dear friend, have you never thrown the bacon at your wife? * * * Have you * NOVEL NAVAL DIVING SCHOOL \' t that the Rety i the other cruisers not fts- did cr evidence « ss of Russia for val war ! 1 especial- Hr‘ series of hools & stablished the great naval arsenals and battleship building yards where the work of first select- 1 then careful ing and y training naval through thor@ughness that has to be Wealized. Portsmouth is, b‘ greatest of ail Britain's 0 , and here is established livers and repairers is gone with a to “academies.” Any able-bodied man may volunteer for service a maval diver, but noth- ing can be more rigidly strict than the physical examination which these men have to pass. It i well known that divers make “big money.” You see, the average workingman is out of his element in more senses than one at the bottom of the sea, and the pressure of water at great depths causes severe bleeding from the nose, mouth and even the ears. Now and then divers make fortunes at one coup, as in the famous case of Lambert, who recovered $375,000 in specie from the wreck of the Al- phonso XIII, which sank in nearly thirty fathoms off Point Gando, in culiar Grand Canary. Not one man in a hundred thousand could have worked at this depth, but Lambert, after ef- forts extending over six or seven months, succeeded in getting into the treasure champer of the ship and hoisting the precious boxes to the sur- face. He netted nearly $40,000 for (n;olr by the job and forthwith re- The man who gets to be a patcher of damaged warships below the wa- ter line must be distinctly sound in wind and limb. His life must have been clean. It is all up with his chances if he has been a hard drinker. When finally he has passed all exami- nations as to his physique he is taken to school like a smail boy. You never saw such a curious “school.” It is for all the world like a gas tank, with slits of plate glass here and there like a peepshow. The pupil probably does not like his kit or outfit, which commences with the thickest of woolen sweaters and un- derclothes, and then a nice little pair of boots weighing nearly forty pounds; (h;‘\ have big masses of lead on the soles. His working suit is of rubber, which will hold a reserve stock of air, and his helmet is screwed to his breastplate in a way that makes it absolutely watertight. He may be much troubled with his life line and his air tubes., but in Peality he need have no fear, for his attendants above water are selected from the most experienced of jack tars. His teacher, too, is a thoughtful, kindly and considerate officer. Everything that modern science can suggest is provided for the pupil. in- cluding electric telephones and sub- aqueous searchlights. The pupil dresses on a platform at the top of the iron staircase, and it Is probably with much misgiving that he first steps backward down the ladder into some twenty feet of water. The first sensation is some- what stifling, but he soon grows accus- tomed to it. His movements are closely watched through the plate glass win- dows below and his signals carefully noted. Instructions from the officer in charge are immediately conveyed to him by telephone and his reply is noted. Most probably he.is some sort of a craftsman to begin with—perhaps a blacksmith or a carpenter. He is set to do all kinds of work under water, even riveting steel - plates and patching holes in woodwork with both timber and masses of canvas and tarpaulin. By the way, notwithstanding the im- mense weight of his leaden boots and his helmet and breastplate, with their brass and copper fittings, it is aston- ishing how little the man weighs in the water as he is being drawn up. ‘When a full grown graduate from the training school the budding seaman diver is set to work in harbors, cleaning and scraping the bottoms of battle- ships, removing weeds and barnacles and doing general repairs. An amusing story was related in this connection about a graduate seaman diver. He was sent below to scrape the bottom of the first-class battleship Goliath, and was down so long that a peremptory signal was at last given him from above to come up. No no- tice was taken of .this, however, and presently, to the amazement and alarm of his mates. his tools began to float o) 4 up —ard one by one and appeared on the surface. Feeling certain now that a tragedy had happened, a second seaman diver was dressed and sent below, only to find that the supposed dead man was fast asleep, sitting on a steel rail right underneath the keel of 'the immense battleship. When fully competent the man is drafted to a battleship or eruisgr and his complete outfit is always~ kept ready for him. Needless to say, these men frequently have very startling ad- ventures, and the most remarkable and authentic of these that occurs to the present writer happened to seaman diver Young. of the first-class crulser Diana of the British navy. The Diana had a hole knocked in her bottom through a collision. and Young was at once sent down to make tempo- rary repairs, for, of course, thanks to the extraordinary perfect system of water-tight compartments, a hole or two in a warship’s bottom does not necessarily mean ‘total destruction, particularly if well-trained subaqueous patchers and tinkers are carried on board. . The adventure of Young is a . short story. He simply got himself tangled up in wreckage and, feeling scared, gave the necessary three pulls on -his life line to be drawn up. The men at the top hauled lustlly, but only made Young’s condition infinitely worse, by forcing him into an upside down posi- tion, where the unfortunate man re- mained for ten solid hours before as- sistance could be given him. There he swayed, fathoms deep in the sea, head downward, his life line and air, tubes hopelessly twisted and entangled, and with all kinds of cu- rious and inquisitive sea monsters coming around to see what was the matter. never grumbled at the dmrer of hashed mutton twice a week, as though any ‘woman would not be only ‘too pleased to provide you with a ten—emu-se din- ner every night, cooked by ‘@ French “chet,” if only you could afford tq give her sufficient money for housekeeping on such a scale? * * ¢ Areyou never at times unreasonable, bad-tempered, quarrelsome? Yes, I know you are not Carlyle. | That is what I am coming to. Because you very loften—well, let us say now and again, make an ass of yourself, do you regard yourself as in- capable of ever Pehaving sensibly? Because you ‘are; generally speaking, a poor ‘thing, are you hopeless of ever being great under any circumstances whatsoever? What I want you to say to yourself is this; These great men of whom we read, these men we are told and rightly told to admire, these men who have done herdic deeds, who have served well their kind, they were men as you and I, compounded of much littleness together with a little great- ness. I am not thinking of the little-mind- ed, scandal-loving reader, who, feeling himself hopelessly contemptible, huss to himself the consolation that all men are equally contemptiblé. He is not worth considering oné way or the other. We will let him gloat over stories, discreditable—shameful to the great—if he will. He is beyond the reach of further harm. 3ut to the sympathetic reader, the portrait of a great man as he lived and not as he posed is helpful, Let us see them as they were—struggling, failing, conquer- ing men like ourselves with whom we can feel kinship. The laudatory blog- raphy presents its hero always as a Pharisee. The charm of Bunyan's Christian was that he occasionally skipped backward. The place for the consistently heroic figure is the opera and stage. Not that all this has much to do with the Creevey Papers. They were not a very heroic group, the men that Creevey draws for us. But the book is useful in heiping to reveal the littleness of people that the world does ill in regarding as great. Creevey washes the paint from many of ‘these gaudy figures, strips them of the fine clothes to which they never had any right, and presents them to us, the commonplace and often vulgar-people that hidden behind their titles they ex- isted. Snobbery, fairly well paid for the job, finds it to its Interest tb paint its masters with a halo of all the vir- tues round their head. It is well when a frank chatterer of the Creevey type presents them as they really were, say- ing unconsciously to the world: “Be- hold the little tin gods you have been worshiping!” To some it evidently appears rank blasphemy that men and women con- nected with the House of Lords should ever be spoken of except in tones of reverential awe. On' the appearance of the Creevey Papers an amusing cor- respondence was published in a London daily paper. One lady wrote indig- nantly, demanding that the book should be suppressed. It was disgrace- ful, said the correspondent, that stories should be told reflecting on tlie great- grandrartper of our beloved Ring Ed- ward. Even the great-uncle of Queen Victoria, it appeared had not been spared. What was the world coming to? Loyalty seems to be growing apace in this country. It is perhaps fortun- ate for themselves that most of our historians are dead. Mr. Jusfin Mec- Carthy, if he be spared to us much longer, will find himself, one feéars, in the stocks, before many years. His book, “The History of the Four Georges,” must surely make the blood of every loyal Britisher boil in his veins. Thackeray, this lady would have had whipped at _the cart’s tail. I am waiting for_some affectionate subject to protest ‘against the shameful stories dealing with the domestic life of bluff King Hal. Where are we to stop? There are reighing monarchs who, I believe, trace theéir ancestry back to Noah. Some loyal subject will be writ- ing to the papers demanding that all reference to that vineyard shall be suppressed in future editfons of the Bible. Thén, there is Adam. I am given to understand that Adain was an ancestor of our beloved King:Edward. It has been calculated as possible, ac- cording to dates furnished by history, ¢1at Adam could be King Edward's grandfather only one hundred and eighty times removed. It is nof for the children of loyal British subjects to be taught that their beloved ménarch’s great-grandfather, only a hundred and eighty times removed, was made out of mere garden mold. -Cain likewise was a sort cf great-uncle to our royal fam- ily. Surely the first few chapters of Genesis might with advantage be now allowed to drop out. | AMERICA PAYS FOR FOREIGN JAILS | NCLE SAM'S money finds its way into many remote corners of the world, where it settles many odd accounts. This year's book of estimates, for example, calls for $350 as our “annual propor- tion of the expenses of Cape Spartel and Tangiers light, on the coast of Morocco, including loss by exchange.” As if we did not have criminalg enough here, $5000 is asked for the purpose of bringing home persons charged with crime, a sum annually appropriated. The African slave trade does not. impress one as a living issue, and yet we appropriate the sum of $100 a year under the Brussels-agreement of 1890 for the repression of the African slave trade'and the restriction of the sale in a certain defined zone of Africa of -firearms, ammunition -and . spirit- uous liquors. This is cheap prohibition. Schoolboys who rattle off” ‘“oblate spheroid” as if that geometrical term settled the question of shape of the earth forget that it is a continued story, for which Uncle Sam con- trfbutes $1500 towarc each year's in- stallment. This is really for member- ship in an association of- earth-meas- ures and is mdependeut of the much Jarger sum which ‘the Govérnment, through its own bureaus each year, spends in that investigation. In fact, like any responsible citizen in private life, Uncle Sam has certain subscriptions to make of a public spirited sort in the family of the na- tions. He subscribes $2300 a year toward an international bureau of weights and measures and about half as much toward an international bu- reau at Brussels for the translation and publication of customs tariffs. He gives his share toward The Hague court, $1250 a year—which is, by the way, the cost of the navy for eacn six and one-third minutes of the year. The army, the navy and pensions to- gether, legitimate war expenses, con- sume every ninety seconds of the year— day and night, holidays and Sundays— a sum equaling, to quote the words of the book of estimates, “‘the share of the United States in the expenses for the year 1903 of the international bureau of the permanent court of arbitration ereated under article 22 of the conven- ticn, .concluded at The Hague, for the pécific settlement of international dis- Our membership fee in the Interna- tional Prison Association is $2000 a year. ‘We pay for keeping and feeding American prisoners in China, Korea, Slam and Turkey, providing no more than 50 cents a day for each prisoner. ‘We also hire a prison for American convicts in Turkey and pay wages of keepers there. The wages of our prison keeper in Korea are just $600 a year, but no doubt the incumbent of this strange office would hate to be dis- placed worse than our Embassador at the court of St. James. Some things come so cheap as to oc- casion wonder as to what we can get for the money. For example, this great republic annually lays down $25 to- ward the support of the Sumerset Hos- pital at Cape Town, “upon the assur- ance that suffering seamen and citi- zens of the United States will be ad- mitted to its privilegs.” The legatjon at Constantinople has to have a stedm launch. Our Government wants to build a house within the le- gation compound at Peking as a home of the school for Chinese interpreteérs which it is desired to establish there. Its pupils, numbering ten, are to be American students who, under a new law, will go out there to learn Chinese at a salary of $1000 per year ;while studying. As fast as they become competent they will be assigned to our consulates in the empire at a better salary. They. must agree to stay in the service ten years if wanted and in turn the Goy- ernment agrees not to turn them out of office when the country goes Demo- cratic—for the fear that they might give Republican translations of consu- lar invoices. This would be a new ap: propriation. ) Secretary Hay insists that the com- sular salaries in many cases be raiséd: Sierra Leone he reports.as most un- healthful. In the interest of our trade with the west coast of Africa the salary should be made $2000. We now pay $1500 a year. Sivas, Turkey. is de- scribed as a most undesirable place of residence, and often one of discomfort and danger. The increase proposed is from $1500 to $2000. - Suva, the.capital of the Fiji Islands. which comprises a group of more than 200 islands at pres- enit, has’'a commercial agent compen- sated by fees. It is recommended t.hu a salary of $2000 be provided.