The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 28, 1905, Page 5

LD Limuel had occasion to remain over night at the little hotel in the county town. After supper he ob- served sereval men moving about mysteriously. They went up the stairs. Not long afterward a young fellow came down, spoke to old Lim end took a seat beside him. It seemed that he was struggling with himself to keep qulet. “Well, Harvey, how ere you getting along? the old man inquired, looking &t him with a knowing eye. “Oh, very well Say, Uncle Lim, I came to town rather hurriedly to-day and @ian’t bring es much money as I needed— and If you'll let me have 310 till to-mor- row I'll be much obliged to you.” The old man looked at him. “Broke you about the first hand, didn’t they?” The young fellow strove to appear sur- prised. “Broke me ~An hah I guess you picked up some- thin’ you thought couldn’t be beaten. Three sces do look besutiful™ *Uncle Lim, I hope you don’t think—" “Oh, no: mot at afll. But I was just thinkin’ how putty three aces look to the young feiler that hasn’t been playin® jong. They are three delightful tunes made vistble. Each one is sweeter than the other onme; and they are puttier and puttier as the pot is raised untdl finally they go into & sudden decline. And when some feller shows down the power of mathematics or the potent glow of col- ors—a straight or a flush—why, then the north wind mourns among the grave- stones.” *Uncle Lim, I hope you won't say any- thing about it out our way, but I was in & little game just now, and if you will Jet me have $10 till to-morrow—I belleve 1 can win cut The fellow just happened to make a flush against my three aces, bot’ “Yes, Harvey, and you just happened to have the three aces. Poker is a game of just happened. And I know exactly how you feel. Every nerve within you is tinglin’ to get back into that game. And the strike of a black bass is noth- in’ to the thrill of fillin’ & hand. When you have kings up, draw one card and catch a king, it is like the dawn of genius. It is the comin’ of spring all of a sudden, and the burstin’ into bloom 7 2 . S Y —_y e A QLD MAN BRIZANTINE" S THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. <> ON —_—— O . LI brave and generous—and with the rest of the brave and generous he had his faults. One night Jim and a passle of us got together in the back room of old Hinkley’s store. Jim said he couldn't stay long, but would play a few hands. He had threes beaten the first hand and then he took off his overcoat. It was a rainin’ and now and then there was a rumble of tnunder. I can rec- ollect it better than If it were last night. A raftsman named Patterson opened a pot on trays-and sevens. Jim —your daddy—had three aces and raised him. Every onme else dropped out. Patterson began to study. ‘Have you got that sort o. a hand? he asked, and Jim just simply peinted to his money in the pot. ‘Well,'I don't know,’ said Patterson. ‘Every time I poke my nose in somebody raises me, and I don’t believe they can have ‘em all the time. Hanged if I know where they get ‘em. Well, I reckon I'm beaten, but FII stand the raise—just this once. “He put in $10 and drew one card. Jim sald that he’d draw down to "em, and took two cards. Patterson bet a chip without lookin’ and Jim raised him 320. “Is ft that bad? sald Patterson, slowly skinnin’ his cards. Then his fingers slid down over his stack of chips. ‘Tl tap you,’ he said. Jim had about $i5 more. “Well, he sald, ‘you've got it or you IVE years ago the United States took Porto Rico from Spain and promised the people-in all sin- cerity health, happiness and prosperity. Then most of us promptly forgot all about them. Now ‘the poor people, the peons of the island, had never had health, happiness and pros- perity, so they did not forget. They walted patiently for a while, and then they went in search of the promised blessings. : - There are. in San Francisco to-day 600 native Porto Ricafis still waiting. Crowded together in a district of not more than five blocks radius, they live as they can. Not more than a dozen speak English. Not more than a sixth have work. Very few of the families have enough to eat. Such is the state e B e crelik govs 1o the solutely. less Jord, vt gave them cheerful disposi- tions in Heu of everything else. Fu . in addition to no work @nd little food, fully half the people have a tropical disease brought from their old home to the new—a disease that saps the strength, makes the weak and listless and often compels those who have been able to find work to give it up. Technically it is known as unecinariasis. The medical profes- elon, after its method of naming 2 germ in inverse ratio to its size, be- Stowed this burden on the tiny white worm that until recently has attracted only slight attention In the United tates. sUp to four or five years ago there was very little of it in our country. It was known to exist to some extent in e enita, more widely in_the Philip- pines and Hawali, but principally in Porto Rico, Statistics say. that there of all nature. The candles have been lighted in the temple and you are ready to worship, you are so grateful; but you don't think of tl feller across the table. Maybe he's got three aces. He is listenin’ to their sweet tunes, and soon he .is to hear the mournin’ of the north wind. But you want the ten dol- lars, don’t you?” “Yes, and you can count op it to- morrow.” ~ “But why do you feel so confident that you'll win? Just because you have lost? The fact that you have lost is no proof that you'll win, my son. Bad luck is & sort of stammerer; it repeats it- self. The unlucky man is nearly al- ways the most hopeful, and he’s at the disadvantags of playin’ against his own temperament. If I were goin’ to say that the devil had invented a phrase I would say it's this: ‘Luck is bound to change.’ And it is & wise old gag of the man who sald it did change—got worse. But I'll let you have the ten dollars. “I thank you, Uncle Lim.” “T'll let you have it, but not until efter I've told you somethin’. I'm not going’ to give you a lecture, you under- stand. I don't belleve in them very much. They seem to come too late.” “But what is it you were going to tell me?” He moved uneasily and twice he heid out his hand for the money. The old man pretended not to notice his grow- ing impatience. “Yes, I'll tell you. You don’t remember your father very well, do you, Harvey?’ “No, sir; I wasn't more than five years old when he dfed.” . “Just about five, I should think. Well, your father and I used to run together = long time ago. I was with him when he married your mother, You were the youngest of six.” “Yes, sir.” “Jim was a good feller,” sald the old men, turning = kindly eye back upon the glowing past. “A good feller, SXOACHEREL T2 JUCIKILIN haven’t.’ ‘Either cne or the other,’ re- plied Patterson. ‘Tl call you,” said Jim, and be put in what money he had. Pat- terson showed down a seven full. ‘That ‘breaks me,’ said Jim. He was just about to get up from the table when some one remarked: ‘You've got some money in the bank, haven't you? ‘Mighty little, re- plied Jim. ‘I've got about $0 all told. ‘Will you cash a check for me? The feller cashed it and the game went on. Pretty soon ‘a horse stopped in front of the store. Some one hollered and Hinkley went to the door. When he came back he sald: ‘Jim, here’s a nigger boy come after you. He says your wife is sick.’” ‘It's not unexpected,” sald Jim. ‘Tell the boy to leave the horse and go on home through the woods and say I'll be there right away. Mebby I'll be there before hMm." So the game went on. Every few minutes Jim would say, ‘Well, T've got to quit after the next hand,” but he kept on piayin’. In poker, you know, ft's hard to get up to the next hand. You are al- ways on the edge of the future, but the future itself doesn’t come till the game breaks up and then all Is in the past. After a while Jim won a pot or two. He said that his wife was in good hands. We knew this was a fact and we didn't urge him to go. At about 1 o'clock he was within $4 of even. He looked at his stack and sald it was a godsend. Gam- fully half the enmtire population is af- fected. But as long as Porto Rico be- longed to Spain its germs did not in- terest us. After the Spanish-American war, however, when the treops began to come home, uncinariasis came too. Still it remained for the Porto Ricans, arriving a few years later in shiploads from Honoluly, to bring it to San Fran- cisco in such numbers that now we have more cases than any other one spot in the United States. And since it is here there is only one thing to do. Get rid of it. The cure is very simple, and ‘costs little in time or money. If a station weére es- tablished here, to accommodate a good number at once, and above all one to which the people might be sent and treated immediately on landing, the whole difficulty would be solved. They could then scatter where they would, without the preserit danger of infect- ing others, and with a brighter out- look for themselves. Besides we owe it to these people whom we have un- dertaken to educate and elevate, to make it possible for them to earn a ltving. Yearly in Porto Rico thous- ands of good laborers are lost by this disease, which when it reaches an acute stage makes it impossible for a man to work. There Is no reason that the same thing should happen here. In the meantime, until something can be done on the scale that it ought to be, there are two people in San Francisco—one a doctor with a wide tropical experience; the other, the Crocker nurse of the Associated Char- ities—who have attacked this problem single handed and are doing all in their power to convince the germ that we do not want it here. It was several months ago that the nurse in her daily rounds first decided that the picturesque indolence of the quarter was not due entirely to an inherited manana spirit, but that some slow, wasting, tropical disease was at the bottom of it. Accordingly a close canvass was made of the colony, men, wemen and children, black, white and intermediate, with the result that more than fifty per cent of the people were found to have it The particular pastime of this un- cinariasis germ is to hook Itself into the lining of the intestinal tract, suck the blood, and at the same time generate powerful poisons. Gradually the man becomes paler and weaker. All day his bones ache with a dull weary ache. Soon nothing is done that can be left undone, for there is no energy to waste. So everywhere that the Porto Ricans go the belief spreads that as a people they are lazy and in- efficient. How can a man be any- thing else, how can he be energetic and strenuous, when he has a disease whose very symptoms are weakness and anzemia? Just_how this disease spreads is as yet not fully decided, but the soil geems to. play an important part ‘When the eggs laid by the worm in ‘the intestinal tract are carried out of the body and deposited in water or on the ground, they mature,rapidly in the warm sun. California‘has just the temperature they need. Taken back into the body through the water, or by eating products of thg infected soil, the larvae find the conditions needed for their development in the intestinal tract, and another worm is the result. So it goes on and on, till finally the patient dies, long before he reaches old age, fram sheer weakness. It is to prevent this neediess waste of strength and life that these two people in San Francisco are working long hours after the usual day’s work is done. To get the first blood speci- men, which does not contain the germ itself, but only shows whether the con- ditions are favorable, alone took weeks. It meant climbing the steep hills from Pacific to Union and from Montgomery to Powell; up flights of rickety, uncarpeted stairs to dark top floors, down equally rickety stairs to blers talk about the Infinite, you know. They are profane, weak and superstitious —and thev are so lackin' in reverence as to attribute good luck to the highest of all sources. Well after a while, when the winners were tired and ready to quit and the losers resentful, Jim opened a pot on queens and sixes. Hinkley stayed and drew three cards. Jim drew one, of course—and caught a queen. This was his chance to cash in winner. Ha bet § and Hinkley raised him 3. He raised Hinkley $25 and Hinkley tapped him for all he had, Jim knew he was Dbeaten, but after shifting about sald he had to call out of respect for his hand. He put in all the money he had and cld Hinkley spread an ace full I recollect that night, Harvey, and Jim never forgot it. He started on home—and news met him about half way. You were allve, but ycur mother was dead. It was the night you were born, Harvey. Yes, but I sald I would let you have ten dollars. Here it =, “No, Uncle Lim,” the young fellow re- piled, “I don’t want it. I won't play again—you have saved ne.” “I hope so, Harvey. And whenever you feel disposed to play, just plcture that liitle country store and that horse a comin’ through the darkness. Don't let anything make you forget it.™ (Copyrighted, 136, by Opie Read) WWW PORTO RICAN COLONY OF THIS CITY general scheme of things, it is hard to make them realize that it need not be. Uncinariasis was only another af- fliction that Dies had heaped on the Portoriquencs and they were used to it. Besides Americanos make so many promises that they never fulfill. But at last ten men were found will- Ing to trust “el doctor” to the bitter end. Accordingly a second examina- tion was made to test the actual pres- ence of the germs, and arrangements made for giving the treatment in the dispensary of the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood House. On the 8th of March the first bluemass capsule and dose of salts was given. It sounds simple. But to get those ten men together at the same time was a work of art. Tropical ideas of punctuality are peculiar. As for the capsules they went down as capeules always do. But the salts: “Por amor di Dios, es saltiguiera.,” cried one jet black negro as if he had been offered poison. One man took his hat when he saw it coming and heard he could eat nothing that night, and went calm- Iy out, determined to get his dinner before, since he could not have any afterward. When all had .been impartially dosed they were sent home, with strict in- junctions to be back at 8§ the next morning for the real treatment. Just six turned up. The other four had sam- pled the first stage-and no power on earth could persuade them to try the second. In vain it was explained that the bluemass and saltigulera episode was a thing of the past. They tock to their beds, tied up their heads in true Latin fashion and refused to budge. Before the day was over the six heroes on the dispensary floor wished that they, too, were safe in bed. Every fifteen minutes of the first hour they were given one-eighth of a grain of calomel and every hour twenty grains of thymol, until they had taken eighty. By the time the third dose was down they were firmly convinced that this was the meanest trick the Americanos bhad played on them yet. Half of them wanted to leave and would have done so only they were too dizzy to walk. An hour after the last dose of ‘thymol the hated saltigulera again appeared. This time there were no remarks. The needed energy had vanished. With the last ounce of salts the treatment ended. A few hours later these men who for years had not knowh what it was to be free of pain went home cured. For the next few days milk and eggs were sent from the Fruit and Flower Mission, for strength canpot be built up on fried potatoes and beans, and the people are too poor to buy anything else. Two weeks later a second examina- tion was made to be sure that all the germs had disappeared. In a few cases there were still some traces, so another treatment was given. There was no trouble about this, however. The men had proved for themseives the powers of the wizard “doctor’” and they would have willingly have taken®a dozen if he had told’ them to. One man almost insisted on a second treat- ment, just to make sure. not, he must. Since that first ten sixty-two cases have been diagnosed and twenty-eight