The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 3, 1904, Page 12

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. - was the signal great for he o INSTENT [ THROUGH consisting of ‘Chita, the big al and Diogenes, the slee) but big-maned, strong- wed Numidian lion. ing set of puplls, g8 ger, In this act each of the great felines left own cage and entered a larger one in which Carmen was seated on 1 a small rod, the symbol of her authori in her hand. Chita ted willingly into this cage. He was devoted to Carmen and now that Tom Howard was out of sight there ning to disturb his good na- ow chalr, tre e Numidian lion walked into the lazy, nonchalant manner. He e e, 7 i = //// R 2 =~ Mo THE NEXT WAS SHOOT/NE THE AIR A BLACH > AND YELL OV BAP OF QEADL Y ENERGIT |evidently looked on the whole thing @s & bore. But he hed eaten a good dinner, felt at peace with the world, pnd. anyhow, it would soon be over. As he took his place he looked at the crowd with languid curlosity, yawned and acted like a lion who considered a school for a lion of his years as a nuisance, but not enough of one to make a fuss over. But the big Bengal tiger evidently was in an ugly frame of mind. At first he refused to enter the cage. Car- men struck him lightly with her whip. Like a flash the big lips curled up, showing the long, sharp tiger fangs, and at the same time he gave a snarl of rage, low and rumbling at first, but rising until it re-echoed from every part of the circus tent. But Carmen 5 o aining th f the circus " afl n pur 1 the pres- - great cir was talking » s ng bell rang. This - &—— pyright, 1904, by M. McKen.) ANICE ked at his watch minutes past four he was already late for t. Neverthe- into the big de- ined to procure that he sorely clerks and shining pneu- seemed to be in league to and he was strolling im- up eand down, inwardly re- 1e system that made such delay when the sight of a tall, fair also waiting for change, trans- d his feelings llke the touch of wand. His impatience van- s engagement was forgotten. s ideal woman! an might have falled to ce in the mere passing a face in the crowd. Not If Fate, in effect, said to 't you wish you knew her?” ably answered, “Trust me And so the game d tairy seen A weakse pdetect his of Began SBocial customs he regarded as S0 many fences inclosing and dividing the field of action. Under ordinary ices he respected these de- them decorously ame to gateways, like any bred individual. But the ease in hand was comparable only to . s-country ride, when the man who would be in at the death must g° over the fences, jump the ditches and stay him not for gateways and bridges. All of which means that Floyd Manice, usually the most dignified and conservative of men, spent the rest of the afternoon following a slim, erect young woman at a very respect- ful distance and utterly without her knowledge. At € p. m. he had the satisfaction of seeing her enter a smart trap at Mor- ristown, N. J., whither she had un- wittingly led him, and satisfied from her mauner that she was at home, he . paced t platform waiting for the train back to town and making plans with an exultant confidence born of long success. 4 . £ to Morristown for the sum- 7" exclaimed his partner in urprise, when he announced his jon a week later, “I thought you hed New Jersey?” staken idea of yours,” responded Manice with mendacious brevity. “By the way, do you know any one there?” Events usually moved with business- like precision whén Manice started to accomplish an end. Within two weeks from the day on which he first saw his star, as ne called her to himself, he was established in Morrigtown, wait- ing in strong, serene, yet humble ex- pectation for her to appear once more upon his horizon. THE CONQUEROR | e————— By Heith Gordon —™° E3 The days passed like a procession of st she did not appear, and 1 ugh the kindness of « friends, he had a number of intro tions, he made no effort to discover her identity. He had a strange, sweet con- sciousness—to which he held in spite of disappointment and the deplorable sen- timentality into which it was leading him—that she was surely drifting toward him, and that each day’brought them near together. Near the end of the third week his falth was rewarded. It was on the golf links, and a ripple of peculiarly clear, frank laughter somewhere near him caused him to turn his head. She and a companion were sauntering to- ward him, every line of her lithe, graceful figure standing out gloriously against the pure background of the eky, her brown hair framing her face in a bewitching disorder. On this glimpse of her Manice lived for apother week, and tken his friend, Duncan Brown, descended upon him for the week's end stay. Duncan would have been welcome under any circumstances, but when he announced that a great friend of his, Betty Als- ton, lived in Morristown, and offered to take Manice to see her, the latter pressed the freedom of his bachelor quarters upon him with added fer- vency, wondering if by chance he was entertaining an angel unawares. So, indeed, it proved. “I think I saw you on the links the other day,” Miss Alston remarked, turning to Manice after the greetings ‘were over, and that gentleman always wondered what he said in reply. The one impression that he carried away from that meeting was a confusing sense of having been projected unex- pectedly into the very midst of heaven. That impression, however, was not lasting. Time revealed that if Miss Alston was a gulding star, others be- eides himself were looking, raising their eyes to her and following where she led. Still, he drew a sigh of rellef at the thought that he had two rivals instead of one. Always, in these matters, there was safety in numbers. Keeping a watchful eye upon two ri- vals is wearing work even f8r a strong man. If Manice had been fascinated by Betty Alston’s face, at the end of two months it was loveller to him than ever, for the better he knew her the more assured he became of her sweet- ness and womanliness. Counted by con- ventional standards it was a pitfully short time that they had known each other, but he felt as if he had been aware of her through all the thirty-five years of waiting. Thus his love, like & mighty wav uc- — — e whose crest, poised for a moment, must inevitably spend itself in foam, broke rds. Simple, manly words they , falling from his lips almost bro- strength of his love pair of saying what he the v ng him de would “You are only woman in the world fer me,” he concluded, the color that usually glowed under his tan noticeably absent. “From the first moment I knew it. I would have fol- lowed you to the ends of ‘the earth to tell you this, even though I had known that you would refuse me!” Betty Alston, her face as white as his own, turned to him with quivering lips. His earpestness frightened her. But there was Jack Winter—dear Jack with the laughing eyes and the gay smile! And yet Jack would never have followed her out of the crowd, and— She covered her-face with her hands, and Manice, pitted against Fate, set his jaw grimly. “Is there any one else?” he asked at last, and at the gentleness of his volce Betty took courage. “You don’t know how unworthy I fe she began in a trembling voice. “You see I don’t know myself. I hate myself for it, but I really don’t. If you love me like this, I ought to know, oughtn’t I, whether I love you or not?” She looked at him with the puzzled confidence of a child appealing to an elder for help in a crisis. Then sud- denly the color came up over her soft, white neck, rising higher and higher until it suffused her whole face, and the eyes that had been gazing so clear- ly and childishly into his dropped. In that moment her heart was clearer to him than it was to herself. “Think about it for a week, sweet- heart,” he whispered, and, carrying her hand to his lips for a brief moment, turned and left her. “She loves me—she loves, God bless her! I know it,” Manice’s thoughts.ran during the days that followed, and, though the hours seemed endless, not once during that time did he approach her. He shrewdly suspected that his absence would do more than anything else could to reveal her heart to her- self. So sufe of his answer was he that he wanted to make the day memorable to both of them. Many plans suggested themselves, but none of them seemed worthy. Then a chance remark of hers flitted across: his mind and he mur- mured with enthusiasm: “The very thing, by Jove!” She had whimsically sald to him once that it was her idea of bliss to have Hagadorn, the well-known organist, play the wonderful organ at St. Mich- ael's an hour for her alone, and he de- cided that if Hagadorn was suscepti- ble to the persuasive power of money she should have that pleasure. the — But to his dismay he found that he was not. He did not understand the gentleman's request and he refused the offer somewhat haughtily. It was then that Manice appealed to the man, ig- nored the artist, and at the end of his brief but somewhat shame-faced ex- planation Hagadorn was smiling gen- fally. “I'll do it with pleasure,” sald he, holding out his hand. “And of course you'll know just— well, just the right sort of musie?” sug- gested Manice. “The sort that will— that will—" “Yes,” assented the organist, “I think I know the sort,” and they parted in great good humor. At the end of that rapturous hour. of wonderful music in thé dim interior of St. Michael's next day, Betty sim- ply turned her humid eyes upon Manice and held out her hands. It was not until she had galned the poise and assertion of six months of wifehood that she accused him of taking an un- fair advantage, “As if any girl could have refused such a lover!” she taunted, ruffling his hair disgracefully. “It was what the papers call clap-trap.” looked him steadily in the eye and, after a moment’s hesitation, the great striped beast slunk to his place. It was plain that he was In a dangerous mood. Despite the tiger’s temper the lesson would probably have gone on 28 usual had not Tom Howard happened to step beyoud the entrance of the cov- ered way leading to the quarters of the circus people when they are not in the ring. Tom was always intensely wor- ried when Carmen was giving her ani- mal school act. It was this anxiety which led him to leave the circus quar- ters. But his well meant consideration proved costly, . covered passageway Ch The sight stirred the black ; spioldering jealousy. e stopped role as Ca abruptly in h jumped off the pedestal on kad been “atte sent forth a snarl which he expressed his b man who he it had u place in his mistress’ heart. At the first notes of t Carmen turned reprovingly to panther. She knew there wa least danger of her pet attack But he must go on with his he act W g at flerce, ped first angry snar ance or t turned her back on the still sullen I gal tiger. The big tiger and more suliy 1is merves were angry snarl- ¢ the finishing touch. taken her eyes off him. it. He dropped f the floor of the ca for the sprin~ and men to But Bengal tiger quicker. Al ght of je: ished at sight of the atta tress. Before the tiger could use t h or claw the ther had laun tiger’s throat. Over and over on th the two great the panther w E for the far larger t ther had c his sharp, tk r's again he through th glove. But deadly grip Chi Although he m ht be te the great claws, he felt b unti nent’s windpipe fan lion, s natured, only life and death fig pupils. When the circus men sep two big cats the Bengal dead, and the black pan t on his pedestal, tiger was er, torn in twenty pleces, as dy Carr was unhu except for a few sl bruises c: d by her fall on the floor of the cage. Tom Howard was fore- most among the crowd which had rushed to cage. As Carmen placed her hand on the head of the big pan- ther who had died to save her, Chita opened his great yellow eyes, now fast dimming in death. But even In death the ruling passions of his flerce wild animal nature held strong. His eyes brightened with affection at the sight of Carmen. Then his glance fell on Tom Howard. The jealous snarl start- ed from deep down in his throat, he half raised his head. Then It sank down and the black panther’'s eyes closed forever. And Diogenes, the big-maned lon, sat on his pedestal, calm, nonchalant, disinterested, aloof. He was walting for the signal, “Scheol is over.” It did not come. Diogenes walted & lit- tle longer. Then he opened his great jaws In a balf-suppressed yawn, dropped to the floor of the exhibition cage and trotted lazily off to the most comfortable corner of his own cage. '@ THE DISTURBING ELEMENT # | (Copyright, 1904, by K. M. Whitehead.) HE naturalist was vaguely dis- turbed. He paddled back to camp slowly, with a listless stroke, as if he were prone fo turn back. Now and then he ceased paddling and gazed thoughtfully through the dark- ening underbrush of the woods. Red twilight was falling, and against the flaming western sky the tree-tops made sharp, black silhouettes; beneath the pines the blue-black shadows were deepening. Countless volces drifted out to him drowsily on the still air; but the naturalist gave no heed to the sublimity of the approaching forest night, nor did he hear the gentle drone into which the myriad voices blended themselves, The only vision his eyes beheld was that of a smiling, graceful girl, waving a white hand to him from the sloping bank by the camp, and the only sound in his ears was her merry laughter as she stood by her father's side and shouted a good-by. It was because of this that the nat- uralist was vaguely disturbed. Here- tofore the woods and their occupants had chained his every thought. Now he was aware that every primary thought centered about the girl, and that everything else was but a sorry second to her. The naturalist had been in the woods all winter. . It was his intention to correct several fallacies—absurd, but one the less popular—concerning the beaver. With this idea in mind he had built & camp on the upper waters of the Little Otter, within easy reach of — 4} o——— By John Barton Oxford — L s several promising beaver dams; and here he and his two guldes had passed the winter. A very profitable winter, the naturalist had considered it; for, by close observation, he had proved be- yond the shadow of of a doubt that the beaver was much maligned in the pop- ular science of the day. He was busily preparing a book to e brought out in the early summer, giving the beaver his due and undeceiving that portion of the reading public which thirsts for natural history in a popular vein. In the late spring, when the natural- ist was writing the last few chapters of his book, Colonel Strong had come up to the Little Otter for trout and salmon. The colonel's camp was a jmile below the naturalist's—a distance Inconsequential to so strong a paddler as the latter. The colonel had brought with him his daughter, a tactful, charming girl, with a frank enthusiasm for the wilderness in general and the Little Otter in particular. Since Miss Strong's advent into the wilderness the beavers had suffered gross neglect. Those last few chap- ters of “The Beaver as He Really Is” progressed but slowly. The natural- ist sought his desk only late at night or at odd hours in the early morning. The rest of the time he was at the colonel’s camp. He took Miss Strong to the beaver dams to explain to her the intricacies of their construction; he taught her the best casts for trout and salmon; he paddled her to the salmon holes — up and down the stream. And all this time a realization grew upon the naturalist that the woods and their occupants were not sufficient to his happiness. Three weeks went by all too quick- ly. The colonel had announced his intention to start for home two days later. As the naturalist paddled home- ward in the red twilight he became suddenly aware that two days later the woods would be quite different. This great, calm, comforting forest would become a hateful, sterile desert without Miss Strong. The naturalist dug his paddle viclously into the water. “Great Scott! This imbecile mooning must be stopped here and now!™ He hurried the remaining distance Back to camp and endeavored to con- centrate his mind - on the long- neglected conclusion of his book. But concentration is difficult when the for- est is enshrouded in a soft spring night. » After an hour’s frultless labor the naturalist stalked down to the bank of the stream and lighted his pipe. He said many things about beavers that you wlill search vainly for in his published work. He sat on the bank until the round moon, nearing the full, came creeping above the tree urm Then he suddenly arose with the air of a man considerably startled. “Good heavens!" he said, with bdd anxiety in his voice, “I'm in love with the girl!” Two minutes later the cance slid noiselessly into the water, and the naturalist paddled down stream with unseemly haste. As he came around the bend above the colonel's camp he saw the girl sit- ting quite alone before a smoldering fire near the bank. He paddled to the bank and pulled up his canoe. The girl gave him a gay welcome. “But you sald when you left at sun- set that you'd been neglecting your beavers,” she reminded him. “Aren't you neglecting them now?” “Yes, I am,” said he. “I'm complete- ly out of harmony with everything here. A disturbing element has crept into the wilderness.” The girl raised her brows. “It's you,” said the naturalist, shortly. “17" she questioned. “Yes, you,” said he. “The forest used to Dbe sufficient to me. isn't.” “I'm sorry,” she sald quietly. “And I'm not,” said he with vehem- ence. She turned and regarded him archly. “Remember,” she said, quoting a for- mer remark of his “‘the beaver has been grossly misrepresented.’ * “Let him continue to be,” said naturalist. Now it the There was silence for a moment. Then the naturalist came nearer the fire‘ and stood looking down at the girl. i I I were a poet instead of a said he. she asked. to tell you I love you, and research to one for such an undertaki girl laughed nervously. studied the toe of her shoe period. p “It might not be so flc Very as poet 5 - - t but if—if it were scientific 1t womld Lo exact, would i Bk A el e R e A The naturalist had one regret. As he paddled up stream he wanted.to ¢ a “Te Deum,” how. h but he didn't kngw