The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 30, 1904, Page 11

THE S 1904, by la Merrifield.) LA, No Man's iz TAV f Poppies. at above m a dream 1 saw that portals of I rusti- when m vil E 8 P here ar s of him run- ning a f his youth, t { s s we are led 10 expe lore ever tt g s ul self P typewrit: a rag-ti of respect for him. 'GR at Cantico at silent, ef- n was formally 1 to the Hutch— squat, Oriental ng in the tem- nes and larches ng all touches of usually ascribed to ds, but found in the mod- ved ern bachelor t At 2:30, his tweed suit changed for a more T 1al costume, he emerged from the low, broad doorway, stirred by & pagan desire to get closer still to nature, out into the dim, cloistered laces of the woods, where he might float deliclously upon a sea of silence, whose calm was unbroken save by the ripple of a bird note or the snapping of a twig. “I say, but this is great!” burst from his lips luxuriously as he drew in long whiffs of the suave air with its warm, elusive scent of sweet, grow- ing things. “This is life. This is what man was meant for.” As he ceased speaking he lifted his face to the soft breeze that caressed his cheek like a spirit hand and thought unflattering things of clviliza- tion. What after all did this boasted condition mean? What but crowded cities with stone where turf should be, the roar of trains, shrieking of whis- ties, whizzing ou autos, clattering of hoofs and the grind, grind, grind of office life. As he thought of it now, looking as he was straight into na- ture’s smiling, inscrutable face, it all seemed supremely ridiculous. Fauns and satyrs, hamadryads and nalads bad been wiser. At the end of an hour’s walk he found that the path ended abruptly at a grassy knoll. For a few moments Trenham gazed with an appreciation too deep for words. Then with a sigh nent he sank down upon 2ss and stretched himself out, his head resting in the hollow of his clasped hands, his eyes narrowed to slits like gate keepers who would say to the beauties about them, “One at & time, please.” And presently the slits became nar- rower and narrower. “Spring,” he muttered musingly, “is just bursting into young summerhood.” Then his lips twitched slightly and he tried again. “That apple tree looks like sweet, sedate Quaker lady.” He stretched his eyes open wide as if to fling off some irresistible influence. “Good Lord, am I a poet after all?” he demanded comically of the shadowy self that always attends us, but never so palpably es in solitides. And then he smiled and lay staring up into the great arch of the blue above him. Again the slits grew narrower, almost some EATGODPAN “That’s all. I shall be home in a few days, just as soon as I have tan enough to bluff the stay-at-homes into the idea that I've had a glorious been belle of the beach. Be Den'’t look even at an steamer. If sinners entice dress up in' your organdies and Mfth avenue and you'll dmiring sons of Adam in 7 yours, “PERDITA.” y after yesterday. I. Al hail the Man! aw, and'Ceasar isn’tia He has taken the large Mrs. Banks, our gen- , says he is an exception- al young man. Wonder how much board he paid in advance? He isn't 1 young, nor real old, mediate age that is so don't think he is ex- but vou know what med Vandyke and a of rimless eveglasses will do for man. He’s that kind. ‘This morning he escorted all of us through the glen. Did I tell you that we a glen? Oh, s, Glen Ellyn. ferninst the vil It's a break sand bluff, and it's damp and the organdie flock had reli- eschewed its ferny swampi- but you should have seen us after him over fen and stump 1 hidden vine the while he fished them. I opine he is a botanist. er than a barber. Well, it's A letter came f him to-day addressed to Profes- s Adrian Vogel. How's that for in- dividuality. He looks@t, too. He does not dance and he does not play the mandolin. ® He goes for his morning dip at some unearthly hour before we are up. In fact, he does not do any of e orthodox summer ‘manisms,’ but he has manners and customs of his own. “For instance, he sings, and sings There are about ninety and Muses who group themselves in the parlors after dinner to listen to their Apollo. When he sings ‘All Aboard for Dreamland,’ he looks at you 2s much as to say he has only two passes for the boat, but the other one s for you. Yachting and autoing he classes ve racking, but nature, and close ture’s ‘heart, and all the rest of s what the professor’s joy is. I k, privately, we would get closer nature’s heart, and the professor's art, too, if he could be made to un- 3 > expediency of individual r his s for a class, ssed. “I hope for the best. So do other ninety and eight Muses. “Botanically yours, “PERDITA.” “Saturday. “Come to No Man’s Land every time for something doing. We have saved the profesgr's life. If it had only been one of us it wouldn't have been so complicated. A composite gratitude doesn’t go far when it has to botany and He all pupils. we are the £ By Heith Gordon imperceptible. A line from a poem learned in youth trailed across his mind —“Great Pan is dead!” “It's a Me,” . he murmured drowsily. “Great Pan's not dead. Great Pan—" The murmur ended in a knowing smile, the smile of one who has learned for a certainty what fools most mortals be and that in turn faded ifito gravity. Trenham slem.' “It's a singular sleeping beauty of a place—has a breathless, charmed air, as if it were under a spell. there are fairies or godlings to be dis- covered.” So had Natica Duke written to a friend soon after coming to Cantico for the summer. in There were few houses the region—a half dozen within twenty miles, and her first impression of the country was only deepened by her long, solitary strolls. She had a mystical feeling that there was some- thing to be discovered—some secret that she was forever on the verge of. Godling, gnome or fairy, she fancied, might rise in her path at any moment without causing her any surprise, and 80 it was without dismay that she stopped short at the edge of the wood one day upon finding her favorite spot already occupled. For the fraction of a second she half- belleved. Then she wholly disbelleved. No godling would appear in tan ox- fords. Sandals were the utmost one could conceive! Still, as a mortal, the sleeping youth before her was worth consideration. A glance told her that, and she cautiously drew a step nearer. He lay #0 that the spreading branch of a tree shaded his face, his' soft linen hat tossed on the grass beside him, thus revealing the thick dark hair, that looked as If it might have curled had not 1ts owner sternly refused to hear of such a thing. His features reminded her strangely of certain marbles she had seen, they were so massive, yet so finished, and with girlish attention to dress she bestowed an approving glance on his white negligee shirt, the sieeves rolled up to the elbows, and the duck trousers to match. If he was not a godling he was at least a most at- tractive mortal. Daringly she stood and gazed 4t him, tingling with the fear that he might awaken, vet too interested to turn away. The blue of her eyes was matched by the color of the linen gown she wore. Around her neck a dandelion chain dangled like a cable of rich gold. . With a sudden movement she lifted the latter, breaking off a part of it and fastening it into a wreath. Again she hesitated. Then, with hér under lip held petween her teeth in a way that showed two very merry dimples, she took a letter from her dress, hurriedly extracted & tiny pencil from the ens I belleve B AN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. 'ROIM - NO - TTANS < LAND 'IZ0LA FORRESTER.. 77 velope, scrawled something on an un- used sheet and tore it off. Almost holding her breath she tip- toed nearer. He was sleeping very heavily. The scrap of paper she had twisted into the wreath. At last she stood within an arm’'s length of his head. She listened excitealy, but the long, even breaths assured her, Slowly she bent over; lower and lower the wreath descended until it rested on the crisp, dark hair. With the braced alr of a person who feels that he is likely to be shot at any moment, she straightened up and waited, but he did not move. Then with a last admiring glance, for he looked like a veritable flower-crowned god now, she fled back along the path and in a moment had disappeared in the woods. Trenham - woke from a slumber so deep that his very identity was Tost. Long, lazy shadows darkened the sward about him.. Who—what-~where? and instinctively his hand went up, his fingers groping eagerly for some meaning in the soft, damp mass that met their touch. Then thery closed upon the object and brought it around where his eyes could help. He stared at it in silence for a moment. “Crewned, by Jove!” was his dazed exclamation when he at last found speech. The scrap of paper caught his eye and he detached it, smoothed it out and looked at it with absorbed curiosity. “I szlute thee, Great Pan,” was scrib- bled thereon in a girlish hand and at the words a light dawned upon him. Who was she and what was she like? ‘How strange that she, too, should have been thrilled with the same weird sense of the nearness of pagan gods. S The dandelions were curling up like tired children, but Trenham carried the “wredth home as carefully as if it had ‘been of the flowers of Eden, and he smoked many pipes that night in the soft gloom of Norton's roomy porch, ‘they d-meet, and whether her eyes WHE IT71HE RPROFESSQR, IN MID-ZIR ON IHZE BIRE ZIMB OF B DEAD FINZE were blue or gray, and whether she was tall or short, dark or fair, his lady of dreams. Afterward he plumed himself upon having recognized her instantly, though' if the truth twere known it re- quired no great perspicuity. Asked to dinner at the Stanton’s—the nearest neighbors, though three miles away—he had accepted on the chance of getting some clew to the .young lady. And he did. At the sight of him the only other guest, a young woman with the bluest of blue eyes, gave a startled but pleased look that flashed into her eyes and out again so quickly that he would scarce have been sure save for the slight flush that backed up his theory. Later on it transpired that she was the one girl in the neighborhood, and matrons, Trenham shrewdly ar- gued, would scarcely be up to such pranks, or even thinking of the great god Pan. i For the rest, there are people who are still scandalized when they remember the queerness of the Trenham-Duke ‘wedding. It took place in sylvan style a year later on the knoll overlooking the river, and the bride wore—can you believe it?—a wreath of dandelions! to be passed around. It was long af- ter lunch time, and he never misses lunch time. He can put away more fried bluefish and blackberry potpie than five of the Muses, but it is only proof of ‘his exceptional excellence, and the overseer never rebukes him. “Did I tell you she was a widow? Also, interested in botany. I think she stands second best. He likes fried bluefish, ete. “Anyway, we missed him, and there was a swift, summer storm stealing blackly up from the horizon, and the sea moaned as it broke in sobs along the shore. They do those kind of things all right. I used to think that went with the summer man, but it doesn’t. ‘“MacGregor Clarence Blair said he hadn’t ;shown up since breakfast, and he’d seen him making a bee line for the glen, and he’'d said, what's, yer hurry? and the professor had sald he hoped he could have one morning in peace to study without that thunder- ;nt crowéd of old maids hiking after m. ‘“We didn’t believe MacGregor. He looks llke a pale, new sand fly, and his father and mother own all of No Man's Land. The professor never in all this world used such words as hiking and thundering, but Mac- Gregor did. Therefore, I may say, in the same common parlance, that the whole thundering crowd of old maids pitched In and lambasted Mac- Gregor until his pretty white linen suit was not fair to see, and his twining curls were full of sand burrs. Then he howled and retracted, and we all went up the glen after the pro- fessor. “The glen deepens and darkens as you go in, and the sides are rocky and precipitous, with much shrubbery and undergrowth, and scraggly pine trees ligted to windward. And just as the first streak of lightning quivered in the sky we heard a faint shout for help. “It was the professor. He hung sus- pended in air on the bare limb of a dead pine that jutted out from the rock half way up the bluff, like Genius on Pegasus, the widow said, on a petrified Pegasus. “Then Genevieve Persey, our college product, said Pesagus couldn’t be petri- fied. He would have to be ossifled. And the widow began to cry and sat down on a.log and said she didn't care a bit either way, ossified or petrified, and Professor Vogel was such a lovely man and always paid his board like a gentleman and she hated to see him killed before her eyes and she never felt so much like fainting before in all her life. “‘Genevieve said fainting was count- ed out. He was a fine target for light- ning up there, and while it was none of her business and she had no inter- est in the professor as a lovely man, or in the continuance of his regular bgard paying, still, she thought a rope might be a good thing. “‘In mountainous countries,’ Agatha, the artist who has been Europized, ‘I believe they tie a rope around the waist of one person—' “‘It's the shoulders,’ said Genevieve. ‘Kind of a slip knot.” “The professor shouted began for help again, this time fainter still. ‘No, the waist,” said Agatha firmly. ‘And lower that person over the mountain side until he rescues the other party.’ “‘Let's lower MacGregor." mur- mured Genevieve, but the widow 4, and said her feet were getting wet, and she didn’t think it was right to joke in the face of death. That braced us up, because the professor did look like i while the fleeting moments sped Genev and I sped fleeter and found s clotheslines, and a couple of husky lads in sweaters from the peanut stand and the boat- hcuse and we sped back to the glen. “Then the husky lads climbed the bluff on the sandy side and did the Ipine act with the clothesline, as- sisted by several ropes from the boat- house, and before our eyes the profes- sor was pulled back to life and liberty, “He is re v. It is dark and still at the villa hops nor man- dolins to-night. The shock will bring him to, I tk from the botanical dream and cau him to c his joy on some And may heart. th girls are packing, eer has fainted. Only E is ene. He was up bright and early this morning to meet the 6:08 train d when he came back he had a Mrs. Professor and three little Professor juniors tagging mer- rily along after him. ‘No, I do not think men were de- ceivers ev I think it was absent- mindedne: nly Mrs. Professor gave the Muses hing blow when she said st » glad we had all Joined class, rate to the pro as he had $10 and sor's summer botany reduced the course thought it was elevating study one We all assured her it It was, for the pro- she the sweetest, m: could take up. was elevating. we're all going home to-mor- “Yours for single blessedness, “PERDITA." JIM DANDIES By John Murray (Copyright, 1904, by T. C. McClure.) HERE were six men in Com- pany B, Ninth Infantry, who were nicknamed “Jim-Dandies.” They were six spick and span fellows, who always looked fresh and clean and presentable, and they were always detailed for the best headquar- ter posts. This caused jealousy and it was natural that by and by a story should get affoat that the six recruits were fellows without sand. It could be truthfully said that their courage had not been tested, as the Indians had been quiet for a long time, but no one argued thus. It was easler to go with the majority and say with some of the old veterans: “You just mark my words. If we ever get into a brush with the reds it will take four men aplece to hold these dudes on the firing line.” The “Jim-Dandies” were attracted to each other and formed a coterie. They organized a glee club, sang love songs, read popular novels and bought toilet soap. They even wore linen collars and carried clean handkerchiefs, and it was sald of at least three ¢” them that they rubbed their faces with bay rum after a shave. The “Jims" were guyed and ridiculed, but they went their way and bld.e\] their time. They had put in a year of this when the call came for the Ninth to take the fleld. The red men had grown tired of . eace and wanted war again. “Now keep your eyes on our ‘Jim- Dandies,’ ” said the veterans to each other as they went marching away. “If we buck up against the Sioux you'll see six sissy men fainting away to be chucked into an ambulance.” The Ninth went out for business and found it. On the third day after leav- ing the fort it found a big force of Indians in its front, and the fight was hot from the beginning. The reds had the advantage of numbers, and by and by they began to work around on the left flank of the command. The colo- nel saw it, but he could spare only a few men to checkmate the move. They must get into the broken ground and die fighting. It was a military necessity that a small force should be sent, but he hesltated to issue the or- der, and finally called for sergeant to lead a band of volunteers. The six “Jim-Dandles’™ ‘came to the front at once. Even on the march they had clean collars on. “What in time is this!" growled the sergeant as they stepped out. “It's goin’ to take old veterans to hold that ground, and these are only dudes.” “Glve us a chance, colonel,” appealed one of the “Jims.” * \ The seven men took open order and double-quicked across the open into cover and the six “Jims"” sang as they went. The colonel looked blank, and five hundred men laughed and the Indians almost ceased tieir fire they wondered what was up. “Now, dudes,” said the sergeant as they reached cover, “this is no malk- ing love to a red-headed girl on the veranda of a summer hotel. We've got to hold them Injuns off this flank it we die trying. You've got ga chance to show what you're made of, and durn my buttons it I don't plw the first man who looks to the rear! The Ninth had gotten itself into & hole. It was not strong enough to drive the enemy from its front, and were It to attempt a retrograde move- ment the Indians would be encouraged to swarm out in full force. The officers saw the situation before the men did, but when the latter became aware of it there was a flutter along the lines. It might have been more than a flutter, and the colonel’s heart was in his mouth and his teeth set hard, when from the “Jim-Dandles” over on the flank came the rousing chorus of “John Brown.” It stopped the flutter. Some men laughed and some swore, but the song led their thoughts into another channel. Again the Indians pressed down em the left flank. They had discoversd that only half a dozen men opposed them, and that to win the flank was to win the battle, but even with five to ome, owing to the nature of the ground, they could make no way. Ths “Jims” were shooting to kill when they were not laughing or singing and the sergeant watched them close~ ly and muttered to himseif: “I've been down on these dudes along with the crowd, but blast my eyes it I ever saw purtler fightin’. I guess I've got to take back what I've sald. Say, now, but what's the matter over in the center?” The matter was that a company was being withdrawn to reinforce the right, but the movement caused un- easiness and a slackening of the fire. Men were beginning to look to the rear and breathe heavily, and the Indians to utter whoops-of exultation and make ready for a rush, when the six “Jim- Dandles.” who were temporarily out of it, leaped up on the rocks and began to sing a topical song. It was new to most of their comrades, and the jolly air caught on at once and started cheers 8!l along the Hne. Two hundred men joined M _the chorus, and they were singing yet as the colonel perfected his plans and or- dered a forward movement. There was a grand charge and a rout, and the Ninth had not only extricated itseilf, but won a victory to be proud of. “Splendid move of yours, colonel,”™ said the major when the fight had been won. ~But I couldn't have made it with- out the singing. Tell Captain Barnes to send his six ‘Jim-Dandies’ to me. 1 want to thank 'em persomally. A dude sglee club beats artillery all to pleces at fighting Indianal™ af