The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 26, 1905, Page 7

r THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. CRUISE of eighteen months in ancient wooden warship husett in the South Pa- left me in the shape to the beauties of nature with one Teover, the Bread Wagon hore with a flat wheel. An on on shipboard doused my ard glim and for a period of five I did all my looking with the other eye. But Uncle Sam was good to his old shipmate. He had me freighted, at nent expense, from South to Brooklyn and the eye car- expl penters there trimmed my lamp so that sight was almost as brisk as be- the they pald me off and I mbling some more. D that came near wreck- A blue eye happened in the of the Pacific Ocean. One day & young ensign named Clark got busy with a gun's crew of lobsters and tried to pess us out some Oral In- Struction in Ordnance. That sounds pretty good, but it is bad for the eyes. Tc illustrate the lecture on ordnance the ensign removed the fusestock from This fuse was a metal rlinder three inches long, containing d er fitted with a percus- rk took the plunger ylinder to tell us how It dropped the plunger. As it ed forward to pick it up; metal plate in the *d and my faithful discharge in its up- midd ded know all about the workings w fuse for six-inch e some of the details: g SS ¢ t pay; there is no stior »out it, for we have the r f a man who has tried it. L pr f of our entire sincerity state that when we ac- and exclusive block e at once abandoned the successful _in engaged. We t we could be fifty thou- Railroad. Not only n and a snare—at but Fame is a e who lures us was told until ern writer. had tried for us thing in pect. The world has been going on ow two or three thousand for lating a large of experience e st sons men drawon, but no one has been known to she’'s making more money dan she needs for her living ex- penses, and she don’t know what to do about it. I was telling you how ghe got to be a French laundress slong with de swell trade dat Miss Fannje and Duchess drummed up for her. Duchess made her do business E good old modder is up agalnst N de hardest trouble of her life— S TE DEARS! SAYS SHE AT I TEVER Bor story submitted. rule, be given the preference, but all strong strong stories by new writers, will receive careful consideration. Each story will be judged strictly upon its literary merit. Type- written copy is the easiest to read and will receive the first consider- etion from the editor, but do not hesitate to send a story in hand- writing if you cannot afford to have it typewritten. Fiity dollars in cash for a story of not less than 2500 words and not more than 3500 words is approximately $17 per thousand words, or 1.7 cents per word. The highest price paid by the leading magazines for the work of any but the very best writers is rarely more than two cents a word, more often one cent and a half, and generally one cent. With the majority of magazines the writer, after his story is ac- cepted, is compelled to wait until the publication of his story before he is paid, a period of seldom less than six months, and usually from The stories accepted in this contest will be paid for immediately upon publication, zad will be published on th:e first Sunday following the judsing of the manuyscripts. czll for his share. @ 0000000000000000000000 mmmmoomommm‘omm Cwm l:;\[A)DEN: nine months to a year. 2 o P =5 My face was polka-dotted with minute chunks of scrap iron and several lumps of burning powder lodged in the eyeball. The ship’s surgeon dug out the powder and bound my eyes in & flour sack that had three large purple X's on it. We had the best of flour sacks. He sald the wounds were nothing and that I would be all right in a few days. And so I would, had they not sent me to stand lookout on the foretopsail yard in a wet gale. Cold settled in the injured eye and my prospect of becoming an admiral grew quite dull and blinky. For months I lurked on the gloomy lower deck away from the light, at- tired in a pair of goggles and a thick mantle of melancholy. I thought a great deal about my past,”but didn't care to brood on the future. Our ship was at sea when my lamp went out, and we were forty-five days reaching the coast of Chile. After much coastwise cruising, following the habit of warships afraid to go to sea, the tubby Wachusett fell in with the Pacific squadron at Valparaiso, and the assembled surgeons held a board of survey on my smoky headlight. Not- withstanding the eye was a fierce-look- ing proposition, the chief surgeon the moment he beheld it exclaimed to the board: “Do you know, gentlemen, I once had a valuable dog with an eye like that. He got it poisoned in the woods.” The surgeon then grew intensely en- thusiastic—over the dog—and went into details for the benefit of the doc- tors, who also seemed interested. I did hear the dog's name, but have for- gotten it. Any way, they packed me off on a British mail steamer, deck passage, via the Isthmus of Panama, to the navy yard at Brooklyn. There I lingered three months in the Marine Hospital, better known as the Stone It the one bank which there is never likely to be a run. Ev- ery man who ever lived insisted on go- ng out and manufacturing his own perience, after which he was perfect willing to divide with anyone else. But there are never any takers. Experi- ence has always been a drug on the market and always will be. However, this fact will not deter us from relat- ing the life story of John D. Scroggins. John D. began life in his early youth, as did most of us. At least, history has no record of anyone beginning after the age of forty. He was ambi- tious and enterprising and was ush- ered into the world with the full grown e0es000 ANNOUNCEMENT. is on under a French name—and double her price. Mrs. Murphy is her partner, and dey has a dozen goils wolking for dem, and all de trade dey can do. When she foist got into trouble wit making more monex dan her expenses she sends for me and Duchess and she says, “Me dears,” she says, “what will I ever do? Shall I lower me price or refuse all de business dat is coming our way sinde me and Mrs. Murphy got to be French laundresses, instead of Irish- American wash ladies. What will T do, me dears?—for all de stockings we isn't weering is filling with money and it is a sore trouble.” ‘Well, you should seen de look on Duthces’ face wher modder talked of lowsring prices so she wouldn't have 80 mauch money coming in. “Raise your prices, modder dear,” she says. “Never lower 'em.” “Sure, dearle,” says me troubled modder, “we tried dat, and de more we |raises ’em de more woik de swell ladies sends to us, and de more goils we has to hire. It's a bad way.” Duchess was so paralyzed at de way de ¢ld ladies looks at de game dat she wouldn’t speak, so I says: “Why don't you and Mrs. Murphy start a saving bank account, and not be boddered wit/de keep of de long ~reen, if dat's whiit's keeping you awake nights. I don't know what de feeling can be like to have more long green dan I wart—having a French goil for a wife—but If it is bad as all dat, put troubles on de savings banks.” Not in dis end of town, Chimmie,” sayf Mrs. Murphy. “It's wort your life| to draw out your money when you once get it. If you are seen go- ing to de bank and draw out so much as de price of a new apron, a run starts. Dey are good citizens in dis part of Manhattan, all right—per- haps—but dey can’t be educated to believe dat any one wants to draw out money unless de bank is on de blink—and den de panic. o mg Hard By Charles Dryden Frigate, with eighty or minety bunged and battered marines like myself. A splendid young doctor at the hospital worked on my lamp until finally he got the wick pricked up out of the oll and 1 could see a little of everything ex- cept money. At length, one day, the main squeeze called me to his office and wanted to know if I had any home or friends. I mentioned the ancestral ha]l at Mud- ville, Tll. A few days later they hand- ed out my discharge from the navy and all the pay that was coming to me. Instead of seeking the fatted calf, 1 tock a cheap steamer to Galveston, Tex., and eventually wound up on a cattle train, which was getting pretty close to the calf. An old-time winter was raging in Brooklyn, and I couldn’t stand the cold after the long sojourn in tropic lands and islands. From Galves- ton I went to San Antonio on the tin roof of a day coach in the night time, and struck a bully job climbing poles for the Bell Telephone Company, which was installing a system. At this con- ge;:lnl task I wore a compleie man-of- war uniform and a pair of climbing spurs lashed to my shins. It was the uniform that lured me into the navy, and I wanted to get my money’s worth. People came miles to see me clinib poles in that rig, for storm-tossed ma- rines were said to be scarce in the heart of Texas at that period. Ever and anon I hung by one ear from the crossbar of a telephone pole, and the people felt amply repaid for their trouble. Then I continued to ramble and to roam until I went to the bad at Waco. ‘While loafing around a livery stable, expecting to get a job driving 'bus To and From, a gentle. an who said he liked my appearance offered me a situ- ation as traveling comparion to two carloads of unsophisticated steers. The deal was closed at once. He gave me a pass, a lantern and a long pole with a nail at the end, and the steers and I started for Chicago. I punched the animals as far as St. Louis and then grew tired of beef on the hoof. My per- sonally conduected tour collapsed, and, while the unhappy steers went on alone to Mr. Armour, I switched off and worked the Alton road as far as Peoria, IL.. looking for foundry jobs. The advent of summer had closed most of the shops, so I cut across on the Wabash to Keokuk, Ia., intending to take the river to the gulf and go to sea some more. On this box-car dash through Western Illinois I passed with- in twenty miles of Mudville, which town had no bulletins from me in three years; but I 'did not stop off, having neglected to make my fortune while absent. There is at Keokuk a Government canal, under river and harbor auspices. The man in charge of the canal had a relative high in naval circles, and my talk, togs and papers made a hit with him. Wherefore, I slid gracefully into a berth as lineman on a Government steamboat at $40 per month and board. My success instilled vast quantities of bitterness In the bosoms of certain youthful Keokukians who were edu- ! “AND STARTED TO WALK ASHORE ON THE SHADOW." determination to be rich, famous, and unindicted at the same time. It will be seen from this how far reaching were his designs. Almost any of us might determine to be any one, or even any two, of these, but to make up your mind in cold blood and with malice aforethought to be all three, is a rather larger contract than most of us care to undertake. While other men were spending their substance in paying their debts and buying shoes and stock- ings “for the children and indulg- ing in other interesting forms of riot- ous living, John D. was sitting up nights with the secrets of other firms For the purpose of encouraging California and Western writers, by offering a consideration for short stories equal to that paid by the best magazines, and for the purpose of bringing young and unknown writers to the front, the Sunday Call announces a weekly fiction con- test in which 2 cash prize of $50 will be paid each week for the best There is no section of America more fertile in ma- terial for fiction or more prolific in pens gifted to give spirit to_the material at hand than is California and the West. Therefore the Sun- day Call offers $s50 for the best story submitted each week by a West- Stories of Western life and Western characters will, as a stories, and especially i, “Dere isn’t a"Hun or a Scandahoo- vian in dis end of town dat hasn't & tousand in a savings bank, and what dey has it for gure I don’t know at all, for dey never uses it. But let ’em tink dat de bank is paying out a ‘cent to anybody, den dey all begins to talk in pagan langwudges to once, to pull out deir hairs, poor souls, and de coppers wit deir night sticks isn't enough to drive ’em away from de banks. What good is money dat you don’t need for rent and tea? If you keep it in a stocking like your dear modder and me does, you is afraid of de robbers; and if you put it in a bank vou can't go near it witout start- ing a riot. It's to de bad, Chimmie.” “'Tis de trute as was ever told,” me modder says. “Dere's a Roosian leddy on de floor below us whose good husband runs ten sewing machines in deir bedroom—where he also sleeps, and where you couldn’t swing a ful grown cat Qy its poor tail—and dey has money in a Grand-street bank. I was down In deir room de odder day, giving some medicine I got for a little gurrul 10 years old dat runs one of de sewing machines, and dat had a bad troat because she come to wurruk without enough close to keep out de wind and rain and snow and hail and sleet and chill, and I was having a talk wit de leddy. ‘It is a cruel coun- try, dis, Mrs. Fadden,’ says de Roosian leddy. ‘De poor has no chance in dis country,” she says. ‘De rich has all de money, and we poor has notting for to buy bread wit—let alone medi- cine for de sick gurruls we have to pay two dollars a week to.’ “Well, as she was telling me her troubles, a neighbor comes in de roem, trunning fits as she comes, and she says dat a man was seen drawing meney out of the Grand street bank, and dat de bank was on de bum en- tirely. You'd never believed de way dat poor, dear Roosian leddy acted. She pulls her Hair, and frots at de wmout, and grabs her baby—what was figuring out how he could manage to be in on the ground floor before even the back door was opened. That per- severance is a virtue was amply proved by the fact that he was usual- ly there. Little by little he acquired the stock, property and hydraulic ap- paratus of the competing companies. The good will of a corporation doesn’t cost anything; it never ‘has any, While John D.:was toiling upward«in-this manner he was. also iring, yeg and stanging he %% was held Yp Hy 111 rom- inent charities. was_the sole own- er and operator of the choicest pew in the most exclusive church in thHe Each Week for the SHORT STORY $ 50 $ SUNDAY CALL A FAEART-T 7] sitting on a pile of clodding making buttonholes—and she makes a rush for de bank, screaming, good lady, like she was gone mad entirely, as I guess she had. i “De street was packed wit fighting, screaming, cursing, fit-trunning gen- tlemen and leddies from dis end of town, and de Roosian leddy holds up her baby to de cop dat was trying to keep order, and she begs him for de love of heaven to let her in de bank to get de money for to save de life of her dear child. “De cop gives her a place in line and gets her in, and she draws out fifteen hundred dollars, and she's sit- ting up wit it now, and hasn’t moved a step away from it for a week. ~ Sure dere’s notting but trouble for dem as has money, as well Mrs. Murphy and me knows. But I cured de little gur- ru® dat had de cold, and we has her to wurruk for us, doing light jobs at four a week—de saints be praised.” ‘Well, I sees dat what de old ladies was wanting was for Duchess to take care of deir boodle. She likes to take care of mine too well, but ghe was shy in ta care of deirs. We her a little, and she has it now in a bank where it isn't de fashion to have runs, and de old ladles is happy again. It {sn’t so very much, for it was got wit hard wolk. But tell me why it is ;lntflhnn‘lu 10& isn't Il t;:lmt for anding ong green in les alo: side of hat air! il De most yaluable ting dere is, is hot air. It don’t make no difference ‘wedder you want to heat a house or make a reputation, ‘or a fortune, or sell a book, or get to Congress: you most necd is hot air—plenty of it and red hot. g : Dat's no fairy talk, for we has de boodle—Duchess has—to prove it. Duch- ess, she makes a kind of candy dat all de kids, and most of de grand dames dat comes to our place, is croisy- about. She won't tell nobody how to- ; what de FOR THE FOOLISH place. He was a member of the best clubs and he could writé for the most select magazines in the country; so could the rest of us, but that's all the good it would do us. John D. could get his stuff printed, espeecially when his concern kindly condescended to take half a dozen pages of pure adver- tising matter every month while the John D. series ran. % All in all it is fafr to assume that John D. was successful; even he would obably have admitted that if you had t it to him squarely. To be sure, all that he had was his board and clothes in various forms, but it was rather richer board and finer clothes In the selection of stories names will not count. The unknown writer will have the same standing as the popular author. Stories not contest. Always unless accompanied -1 NoOT AlIR. make it, dough she often gives ’em a crooked steer when dey says dey wants to know. What dey make from de rule Duchess tells 'em is very on de blink, and dey comes back for more of de real stuff dat she makes. Well, de odder day Miss Fannie has a crowd of ladies in for to drink tea and talk opray, and some of ’em says, “Can’t your maid make us some of her candy?” I wonders what was up when T takes wold to Duchess and finds she has a 1ot of de stuff all made up. She knows most of ‘em like dey was _side partners of hers, she being wit Miss Fannie so long, and she says to ‘em dat if ever dey wanted some of her candy dey could. get it at de shops. Dey was all so tickled to deat you'd tought dat dey had found a gold brick—and maybe dey had! Let me tell you, when I gets a chance I asks Duchess what t'ell, and she says she was going to make a fortune for our kiddie, Emmett. What do you tink dat goil had done? She'd gone to a swell candy shop and done business wit de boss. He'd heard about de dinky stuff Miss Fannle's maild give to Miss Fannie's frens, and he says to Duchess dat he'd give her a rake-off on all he sold if she’d show ’em how to make it. Well, p'chee, dat goll had a patent on de name—it's a dinky French name I couldn’t pro- nounce in a tousand years—and a pat- ent on how to make it, and she drives ‘a bargain wit de candy boss, and now she’s drumming up e. - Say, you should see her get busy! Al of Fannie’s frens, and all of little Fannie’s frens, is staked out for to bull market. Dey makes a game of it; and if a shop doesn’t keep it—to de wcods wid dat shop! She's buying real estate in de Bronx now, and by de time Emmett grows up he’ll have a glass arm from cutti off coupons. ‘What has dis to do wit hot air? Well, well! Dat candy is made of corn- starch, maple sugar and hot air. Dat’s - cated for the canal, so to speak, by swimming, fishing and falling into it since birth. But, alas! those hopeless aspirants had no man-of-war uniforms. Neither was there a boy among them who had an eye almost blown out in the service of his country, and could talk with the boss about squadrons and things. It was me for the soft snap, all right, and I could have been the sassi- est brat on the river. Maybe I was. Just the same I bulged to the front and got promoted to pilot on a lttle tow boat so small there was just room for myself, the boiler and Mr. T. Foley, engineer, in the order named. Some- times, when cramped for space, 1 used to get out on the bank to turn myself around and Mr. T. Foley was wont to do the same. I might have commanded a bigger boat but for the enmity of the chief pilot of the canal fleet. One Sunday the old man spun a yarn about an immense tooth of some kind he found in the river. I foolishly asked him if the tooth came out of the mouth of the river. Two or three muts laugh- ed and the chief pilot thought I was guying him. He never got over it. In reviewing the past it occurs to me I might have been too fresh for fresh water sailing—and in a canal, at that. However, promotion is not always what it seems. As already stated, the boat I commanded was fully loaded with myself, the boiler and Mr. T. Foley, seated in the order named, and we had no room to carry a cook. This slight kink in the promotion business compelled me to board ashore, at the same wages, and my finances didn’t do so well. Btill, we did valiant service for the United States and Keokuk, towing small barges of stone in the dead waters of the canal The name of this boat was “The Messenger,” and I deemed the handling of her my masterpiece in the art of per- ilous navigation. The Messenger was about as speedy as the boys who wear a blue uniform bearing that label. One day we ventured into the mighty cur- rent of the Mississippi. I headed the Messenger upstream and steamed full speed for three hours in the shade of one tree on the bank; then I whistled for help and a real tug came out and 8ot us. But what could you expect of a boat blighted with that name? Late in the summer the fleet moved down to Quincy, Ill, and built a wing dam from the Missouri shore. They reduced me from pilot on the Messen- ger to deck hand on a larger boat that rated a cook. The pay was still the same, but my income was nearly than the majority of us are accus- tomed to. Everything flowed smoothly for him until he had a dream one night. It seemed to him that he stood alone on a mountain top, or it might have been in the front pew at a mis- sionary meeting. At any rate he stood alone. On every side the ground fell away to an illimitable depth, and the vista was shrouded in mist. He dreamed that he reviewed the long climb that he had had to reach the top and the many obstacles that he had overcome. The bad part of the dream was that he couldn’t for the life of him imagine why he had come. There was no one In sight to talk with or 000006¥0060000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000 2000000000000000000000009000 RULES. (884 As one of the obiects of the Sun Call is to develop orps of Western writers no stories under :;,m: de plume will be.c::'fi;ned. If a story earns publication it will be well worth the writer’s name. v : accepted will be returned at once. Those selected will be published one cach week. v This fiction contest will be continued indefinitely. AV4 B An author may submit as many manuscripts as he desires, but mwfimwmbewmmdmwhmmmm:epd:ndnrhxt:: Vil inclose return postage. No manuscripts will be returned by return-postage. Vil ‘Write on one side of paper only; put name and address Jasgt page, and add-ess to the SUNDAY EDITOR OF T SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. oo EARTF TALK ON TAE USE AND VAL UE e on de honest level. It's de trick of blowing de mess up like an omelette soufflee dat's de secret trick. ' Just maple syrup, corn flour and hot air— plain, cheap hot air—and de ready money is dere for her every week. It sure makes me feel like a tramp to tink how much hot air dere is In de woild, and dat I never made a bean out of it. If it wasn’t foy de hot air in her game I don’t tink Duchess could toined de trick. It's de only way. Remember two or tree years ago dat a forn mug comes over here and says he was talk- ing by wireless from Cape Cod to Ire- land? If he'd sald he was talking across de Harlem he couldn't sold a share, but when he gives it out dat he had a glad hand across seas by wire- less, de stock was all took by de wid- dies and orphans—who gets all de stock and bonds dere is. When he had sold out, de ’‘cross sea conversatidny was dumb as a clam, and now everybody knows dat a good husky boy wit a tin meg'phone can talk furder dan all de wireless dere is. Hot air! Remember de top liner dat says a few years ago dat he was going to run mo- biles wit "lectric batteries only one-fort as heavy as de ones on de avenoo, and dat would run four times as long? Dey didn’t have to wash dat stock. It was all took up by de widdies and orphans, Who cried for more. Where's de bat- tery? You couldn’t find it wit a gen- eral alar.n from headquarters. What was it? Hot air! But dat wasn't what I was going to tell you about. Dat boy, Emmett, of mine is |.u.ek in his school again, and he was ‘lected president of his class. Dat was doing vretty good for a kid- die, and I writes and asks him how he done it. “Dear dad,” he writes back, “de od- der candidates promised de boys ice cream treats, chocolate, pop. soda water and everyting, but 1 made a speech—just a hot air speech, dear dad, and I win in a walk.” - BY NICHCLAS =, NEMO. - n and Off the Bread Wagon LuckTales and Doings of an AmatsurHobo doubled by the reduction in yank and that helped a lot. While wing-dam- ming the river T witnessed one end of a moist love affair that bordered on the pathetic and once more impressed upon me the peril of monkeying with temder passion. Our chief engineer on the boat, an elderly fat man, had an affaiy of the heart ashore, there being no ladies in the fleet. One evening the aged engi~ neer put on his heart-breaking clothea. He wore a white vest, plug hat and gloves, and, with a fragrant bud in the lapel of his Prince Albert, he set out to visit the fair Quincy dame. The steamboat lay with her bow moored to the bank, the stern being swung out a little from the shore, after the man- ner of river craft. There was a Stage plank forward, but none aft. Some painters at work on the after part of the upper deck had left the end of a plank projecting from the roof, and the pale, fickle mcon threw a heavy, elongated shadow of this plank from the lower guardrail to the shore. The dark streak looked just like a staging. Well, the elderly engineer came out of his room, the ne of love flicker- ing brightly beneath the white vest, and started to walk ashore on the shadow. It broke before he had gome two steps. We got a flash of his splash and a glimpse of his bald head ere the laughing waters closed over it. “Man overboard!” shouted the second engi- neer, and two or three small boats put off to the rescue. The bald scalp bobbing along in the swift current served as @ beacom, and scmetimes a broad surface of white vest rolled into view as the fat engi- neer lunged and kicked in frantic en- deavor to reach sho “Laura!™ he velled at intervals h, Laura, save me!” That may have been the name of the lady. We overhauled him 300 yards below the steambeat. The plu hat was never again seen by meortal eye—probably it filled and sank, never to win another trusting heart. Owing to the : of his wind and wardrobe, the tat engineer sent regrets that night te the lady of his cheice. When she heard how he fell overboard that fickle dame also sent back regrets and the ring, and thus another resy dream blew up. Verily, he that is in love walks upon a shadow. When the river and canal froze up that fall I sought the sunny South to save the price of an overccat, and had a Love Affair of my own. For full particulars see next chapter. (Copyright, 1905, by Charles Dryden.) borrow a cigar from, not even a man to sell stock to. That’s all there was to the dream, but the next morning he began to think it over and before his think was finished he had come to the conclu- sion that it was no dream. He had been climbing a long hill all his life and now that he had reached. the top he sat around wondering why he had been such a fool as to do it. The view wasn't much to see and it was mighty cold and lonely up there. He didn't have any neighbors, or if he did, they were on top of other mountain peaks so far away that he couldn’t reach them without a telephone. In other words he had suc- : ceeded in _every- thing that he had 1 it wasp't worth No story will be considered that is less than 2500 nor more than . sm words in length. The length of the story must be marksd in p figures. nights nursing n their ambitions seemed to get a better time out of life and have less fear of falling off if they walked in their sleep. Our conclusion is the same as John D.’s; success isn't worth having after you get it. It's the man who never suc- ceeds but who is al- ways going to—day after to-morrow— the real life. At any rate he never needs to wake up. So we say, the who succeeds, s § 3 § k3 § § in the end, m the man who legibly on succeeds—in for- CALL. getting it some- ! times. — Cop: 1904, by Albert IVARD ~ZOWNSEND. I hepe I live till T see dat kiddie elected President of de United States, Can you beat him§ What! (Copyright, 1908, by Edward W, _ Townsend.)