Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1911 — Page 3

Love and Literature

By MARTHA McCULLOCH-WILLIAMS

(Copyright, 1910, by Associated Literary Press.)

If Clarisse had been an ordinary young woman she would . have screamed at what the opening door revealed. Two men, one short and gruff of countenance, the other tall, dark and sinister, stood at her desk, wrenching at the top of it. For a wonder, she had locked it before going out —even though the thought of burglars had hot entered her mind. She knew other bungalow folk had suffered from them —but being by nature unapprehensive, moreover just then supremely occupied with her own concerns, she had not taken time to be afraid. Instead of screaming, she stepped briskly forward. saying in her quietest voice: “Don’t spoil my lock.” “Then hunt us up the key. And be quick,*’ the tall man answered, not turning his head. The other rumbled out: "Young woman, unless your boss wants to lose tenants —’’ “Who are you? I have no boss. And this place is mine—l won’t have tenants —not even if they let themselves in with Jimmies,” Clarisse flung at him, too angry to think of risk. At her words the tall man wheeled. “Isn’t this Sandslope?” he demanded. Clarisse shook her head. “Do you keep a rogues’ directory?” she asked with withering emphasis. “If you do, get a map as\ well. Sandslope is no doubt worth your attention. I hear the man who furnished and ran away from it had the most beautiful things.” “So! We’re in the wrong box—the wrong bungalow, madame. We beg pardon—at least a thousand times,” the tall man said. The gruff fellow gasped: “Lady—could you, would you—show us—that beast of a place?” Clarisse shook her head. “Against the rule of good neighborhood,” she said. “But the policeman may be more obliging—possibly he’ll take you by it, on the way to prison.” “Prison!” the short man exploded. The tall one touched his arm. “Remember, appearances are all against .us,” he said, “Still. I hope these” (pulling cards and letters from his pocket) “will convince our involuntary hostess we are not the burglars we seem.” Clarisse looked up from the cards, her eyes dancing. “To think an editor, a real live one, was trying to break into my desk! Oh dear, Mr. Dare, you’ve had trials and tribulations with things that are inside it. You don’t know my penname—l shan’t tell you. But if you are really going to live at Sandslope, you may as well know just now that I’m Clarisse May.” “Miss May—we won’t forget you—not while life lasts. This,” nodding to the short man, “is John Dreyer—” “Not the artist! I never, never will believe it!” Clarisse murmured, flinging up her hands. Dreyer grinned. “I know I’m a lot better looking than my pictures—still they ought to have saved me from suspicion.” “But you see, I got Just a glimpse of your profiles—and then the thing you were doing,” Clarisse expostulated. Dreyer nodded. “I know,” he said. “But we were hunting for keys—everything was locked up—and that idiot who let us Sandslope told us we’d find all sorts of keys—in the desk.” “I’ll show you Sandslope now—in fact. I’ll take you to it," Clarisse cried, exultantly. “It’s right across from here, but on me avenue, not the street. They have the same name— Linden. No wonder you mistook the house. Until you learn the distinction, I make you free of my habitation." “You don’t live here all alone?” Dare said, judicially. Clarisse shook her head. '"Except sometimes,” she said. “This is one of the times —Lee Ventress, my housemate, is subject to social aberrations. Went for a house party last Friday week, and hasn’t got back—” “Meantime you?” Dreyer asked, suppressing an Inclination to whistle. “Why, I just stay at home with my murgly inK-and-pen folk—and have good ti 68,” Clarisse expounded. “No, I’m sever lonesome. If I were there is the policeman. You’ll laugh to see him —he’s most eighty and looks like Father Time himself.” “You left your door on the latch! Isn’t that rather hazardous —in spite of Father Time?" Dare asketf. Clarisse looked at him with twinkling eyeb. “Everybody down here knows I write for a living.” she said. “That is why sight of you amazed me so. I’m like the*man who said when the burglar came: ’Wait! If he finds anything IH get up and take It away from him.’ ” “H-m! This must be seen to—at once,” Dare said severely. Dreyer half whispered to Clarisse: “How many stories can you write in six weeks? We are here for that long. Make hay while the sun shines.” “I shan’t!" Clarisse said, with a pout that became her wonderfully. “What’s the use of writing stories, new stories, when you have in hand several varieties—none of them mar ketable?" '

“Say, what do you livo on? Crabs and moonshine?” Dreyer demanded. Clarisse answered promptly:’ “Oh, bread and cheese and kisses mostly—my banty rooster supplies the kisses, besides being a general guardian.*’ Then with a subtle change of manner she added: “You see, I have just enough to starve on if I do nothing at all. So please don’t pnt me in the mendicant class, which says: ‘Buy my wares else I starve.’ ” “Contrariwise—you belong among bloated capitalists,” Dreyer said teasingly. Clarisse waved her hand. “There Is Sandslope—and a frantic agent in the door, looking for you,” she said. “Now —I can leave you with a quiet mind.” Thus was it all begun. After such a ''beginning formality was impossible—even before the aberrant Lee came home, Dare and Dreyer were as much at ease in Sun Flower as at Sandslope. Lee’s appearance did not make them less so. The four,- indeed, coalesced spiritually from the first —there were rides, walks, sails, crabbing parties, expeditions after for actual fresh vegetables. An auto which had seen many much better days wheezed about with them or halted at its convenience. Clarisse wrote hardly anything. She had kept her word —Dare knew no more of her penname than in the beginning. Drever had tried clumsily to find out from other bundaloafers — but without success —Miss May wrote things they knew —but where they were printed, or how, or when, they really couldn’t say. Once Dare set a trap for her — asked her to copy on her machine some fragments of verse. He knew that there was indiv .duality In such work —but Clarisse returned him sheets so fairly written', so letter-per-fect, they betrayed nothing. Moreover, they were in unusual type—small, yet most distinct, with each word double-spaced. Looking narrowly about Sun Flower at his next call, he discovered that there were two machines —a battered veteran, and a span-new creature of the lightest make. It was the new maqhine which had done his work—Clarisse admitted so much readily. Beyond that she would not go—neither would she let Dare use the older instrument. . -4 —■ - —— “You are here to play, not work,” she said. “Besides, you can afford to hire typing—in the interest of unorganized labor, I forbid your doing it yourself." Ther> had been no touch of sentiment, nor indeed of anything hut good companionship in the summer. Notwithstanding, Dare found himself fathoms deep in love. Clarisse had fascinated him from the first scornful 100k —yet. It seemed he must lose her. Try as he would, he could“not pierce her armor. Up to a certain point she was frank as the sunlight—and quite as companionable. Beyond that he could not pass—yet somehow he was sure that she cared. In the assurance he took a desperate chance. Lee and the happy Dreyer, openly her slave, had gene for a sail. Dare, stretched on the sand, chin in hands, half raised himself, saying slowly, and covertly watching Clarisse: “This is the last day of summer. I’m going back tomorrow—so as to have things in shape for my wife." “There! I’ve felt all along you were an angel. Now my premonitions are justified,” Clarisse said, but the eyes watching her had seen her start; seen the quick white that settled about her lips, only to vanish as they smiled. Dare got up not quite steadily. “I’m glad you approve my plan,” he said. “Of course, you’re the one possible wife for me. Please don't think you have to reject me, by way of getting even about the stories.” “Waitr Maybe you’ll reject me—when you know,” Clarisse cried. “I do try to write real stuff —I have sent you heaps of it. But my bread and cheese comes out of—almanacs. I make jokes for them —the worst ever. Now that you know, what have you to say?” "Only this—l love you.” Dare answered.

They Had Met Before.

When George Livingston Richards, the Boston publisher, started in business after leaving college, he was not so prosperous as he is now, and on more than one occasion he was forced to visit a pawn shop. From frequent visits to “Uncle’s," Richards became pretty well acquainted with the proprietor to whom he waa introduced by a mutual friend some years later, when fortune had Just begun to beam upon him. “It seems to me,” said the pawnbroker, with a twinkle in hig eye, “that we have met some place before.” Richards surveyed the other thoughtfully for some seconds and then replied: “Yes, come to think ofyt, I guess we havV) met before. But, strange to say, this la the first I knew that you were bowlegged.”

By Its Looks.

Te you father’s conference with those men a business affair?” “I don’t know, but from the glimpse I caught of their faces just now when James opened the door, I should judge it to be a bored roeotin* *•

CRUISING IN THE POLAR SEAS

A TOILER ON A WHALER

IT there is one branch of the United States naval service in which men and officers alike undergo wild adventures, see strange sights and suffer great hardships it is the Alaskan revenue cutter service. Pursuing criminals In a country wilder even than the bailiwick of the Canadian mounted police, sailing unoharted arctlo seas, capturing Japanese fial smugglers, studying ethnological and geographical conditions among unnamed races and unmapped countries, their lives are filled with the romance and the privations, the mystery and the revelations of the true pioneer. Lieut Leßoy Reinburg, who la in charge of the revenue cutter Patrol at Chicago, saw service in the polar seas In a three years’ cruise aboard the cutter Thetis, which ended in October, 1909. His trips took him thousands of miles, from Cape Attu, the most westerly point of Uncle Sam’s dominions, and one of a tiny ißland group tucked away almost within the sweep of the Asiatic coast, to 81 degrees north latitude, up beyond Cape Hope and Cape Barrow, on the northern coast of Alaska. Some day Lieutenant Reinburg la going to publish the account of those three years, in which the Thetis and her crew represented the United States and.the sovereign law in places where both are but shadowy jtales. He will tell of ice packs miles and miles In extent, in one of which the powerful cutter lay helpless for two weeks, and of a whaler, which, less'fortunate and less stanch, crushed like an egg and went down with all hands. He will tell of cold and hunger—of men found dead on ice packs and starving natives herding together by the hundreds; of adventures comic and tragic and marvelous. To a reporter he recounted some of his wanderings. Saw Whaler Go Down. “We started out of Frisco,” he said, “to be gone three years. “We went up along the coast and struck ice in about 65 degrees north latitude. There was a fleet of whalers there at the time and we stood by to help them if we could. One of them did crush and go down without a moment’s warning and the religiously lncjined said 1t wtus a Judgment of God because the vessel’s captain had kicked in the head of one of the crew a few days before. We ourselves were caught in the ice later, but after two weekß the ice cracked during a fog and when the air cleared we saw a channel opening from us to clear water. “Thera is no police or anything of that sort up in northern Alaska, you know, and part of our duty was to serve all of the warrants that had been issued by the federal authorities. We had a couple of marshals along, and we would send out firing parties along the coast whenever we would get trace of our man. The story of these tripe would fill volumes. We also looked out for Japanese seal poachers, charted the seas we traversed, studied the Eskimo races we ran across, and did a thousand and one things In a land where there were mighty few other people to do them. Our captain, Capt. A. J. Henderson, was s mighty man, with a rule more absolute than that of many kings. We had a federal commissioner along, and could give the men we arrested a preliminary hearing right on the vessel. Then we would take them back to Nome or some other port for trlaL ‘‘Sealing laws are very strictly enforced now, as the government has prohibited the killing of seals entirely for ten years, and the observance of them is rigid. I really believe that it would be easier to kill a man here in Chicago and get away with it than to kill a seal away up in the qorth. a thousand miles from civilization, and escape punishment The government will spend anything necessary to track down the culprit.

“The Japanese are the worst offenders, and eight revenue cutters are kept busy in those waters all the time, keeping watch on them. They are arrested by the scores and the uniform sentence is 16 months’ imprisonment, fines and confiscation of the vessels and all of their equipment, along with whatever hides may be on board. The vessels and the gear are sold by the government, but the odd part about the proceeding is that under the Ikw the skins must be destroyed. Why, I know of one vessel which was taken with 1,600 pelts aboard, and under the law these should be destroyed, although they are worth S4O each. The court is holding them, however, in the hope that some other arrangement can be made about them. The fights that the cutters used to have with the Japanese smugglers and poachers are now almost entirely a thing of the past, although whenever a suspected vessel is sighted it always takes a shot across her bows to stop her. Resistance is rare, however. “During our travels we saw many sights that would rival any of the natural attractions of the world. There, is a waterfall up there whielr is higher: than Niagara, though of course not; nearly bo large, and a natural bridge: that is much finer than the one inj Kentucky. It is 175 feet high within! the arch and fully 600 outside. Up around Bogoslov there 1b an area< about 60 miles in each direction which] is virtually in the making.’ It Is ini a state of volcanic evolution. Look' at these two pictures. They show the: same scene, and one was taken two: weeks alter the other. See the rocks! are twice as high in the second as' they were in the first It’s the same way with the channels along the coast 1 —here one day and there another. There are no charts, no lights, noth- 1 lng of the sort anywhere along the! coast, and navigation is dangerous ini the extreme.” Lieut Reinburg had hundreds of views of sights all over the polar seas. One is the photograph of an Eskimo child, its face ravaged by cancer of the nose. The Infant was operated on and its life saved by the ship’s doctor, A. D. Foster, at 70 degrees north latitude. "Give any disease up there in that climate half a chance, and it will cure Jtaelf,” declared Lieut. Relnburg. Another picture showed the whitened bones and grinning skulls, mounted upon a platform (burial is unknown in the frozen north), of an expedition, which, according to Eskimo tradition, embarked on a search for the north pole 50 years ago on a vessel known as the Genie. Whence It started, or who formed Ifr, none knows, but Its end is known to all. King and Quean of 74 Peopls. “Cape Attu, the westernmost point of Uncle Sam's dominions, contains just 74 people," Lieut. Reinburg went on, “but it has king and queen, just the same. King Philaretta and Queen Maude, that was the best we oould make of their names. I bought one of the finest hand-woven baskets I ever aaw for four dollars from Queen Maude, in her regal hut We tried to determine to what race the Attuans belong, in an effort to get evidence to support the theory that the Mogoliana and Indian racee merge insensibly, through the Eskimo, as one proceeds east from China. We were unable to make any decision, though, as to how the Attuans might be called, and Russian scientists are going out with the next cutter to have a look at them. We send out a cutter there every year and It brings the only ma*' that reaches there. “It would take a dosen volumes to tell of all of the experiences we went through ans of the strange sights we saw. It certainly la a novel quartar of the globe and well worth three years of any one's life.” -

ENGINE IS HIS LIFE

VETERAN ENTHUBES OVER HIB ' LOCOMOTIVE. ’ Only. When Hand Is on the Reverse Bar, He Says, Does He Really Feel Existence Is Worth ’ Having. Seeing the sights here the other day was a veteran engineer who at the age of fifty-six has been serving on express trains for 20 years, says a writer in the Chicago Post. To the question, “How does it feel to run a mile-a-mlnute train?” he answered: “Feel? Man, that’s the only time I live. When I climb up on the high seat, jam my cap over my eyes and reach for the reverse bar I’m not the man you see now. I’ve fed on the excitement so long that I’m a fiend for it how —a regular ‘speed dope.’ Many a night I’ve driven my train —and made time, too —when it was snowing so hard I’d have to rim ahead while we were taking water to see if the headlight was still burning. My ‘smoke’ and I couldn’t tell it from the cab—nothing ahead but a wall of black. Sometimes we wouldn’t know we were moving, except for the tossing of the engine on the track. “Did you know that an engine has a heart?” he rambled'on. “You’ve seen a doctor feel a patient’s pulse wjjen he wants to find out what’s the matter with his works? Well, that's the way we do it, too. When we rush through the black night, maybe with death just around the next curve, we don’t just sit with our bands‘~on the throttle, as the engineers do in the story books. Reverse bar, that’s it. Reverse Bar, Engine’s Heart. “The reverse bar’s the engine’s heart. We never let our fingers off It. It beats with the engine’s life and when anything’s wrong it beats fast or slow or it Jumps a beat, like an old guy’s heart. Then we know, we shut off steam and climb down tp see.” “Is it true that engines vary and men get attached to different ones?”, “True? Course it's true. Engines are just like women—some are contrary all the time and some are agreeable all the time. Some smile and then put poison in your coffee. Some you beat and some you kiss. My old 39 —latest type, biggest made, one o’ three —why, I’m married to her and I wouldn’t give her up for half my pay. I’ve had her three years now. When she goes I’ll go too.” “Don’t you feel the responsibility when you’re pulling a trainload of passengers?” Talks Up to the “Old Man.” “That’s what ‘the old man’ asked me once. ‘I never stopped to think of it,’ I answered him. “ ‘What’?’ he yelled, jumping up and banging down his fist. ‘You didn’t? And why didn’t you?’ ““Cause if I did I’d go crazy,’ I told him. ‘There’s only me and my “smoke” in sight, and when we’re running through fog or storm or snow I look across at where he’s shoveling coal, calm like, and say to myself. There’s only yon and Danny here. Danny is going ahead with his work. Now you’re going to do ,the same, and you ain’t going to think about anything else. You’re going to bring yourself and Danny through, and If you two come through the rest will follow.’ ” Has Killed Seven. “Did you ever kill anybody?” The engineer stopped and counted slowly on his fingers. “Seven,” he said. “And sometimes I dream about them—one in particular—a woman. She stepped right in front of us from behind a freight. I reversed and drew the air, but it didn’t do any good, and we cut her down as I looked. 11l never forget It. “I could retire tomorrow if I wanted to and draw a pension until I die. In 14 years I’ll have to quit, if I last that long. I know I won’t last long afterward.” The interstate commerce act will not allow the engineer of an express train to work more than 16 days in afiy one month, the engineer explained. He had worked his allotment of days early in the month and was enjoying a vacation in Chicago at the road’s expense.

Foreign Whistles Are Weak.

One of the delights of railroad travel abroad ia the escape from the torture that the steam whistle on American roads inflict. It should not be inferred, however, that the foreign locomotive is entirely destitute of these nerve-wrecking Instruments. In England It is the practise to equip all the locomotives with whistles, but they are of such diminutive proportions. as compared with those in use In this country, that they look more like playthings than an instrumentality to save human life. In size they are no larger than an ordinary pickle, and the sound they send out closely resembles the squeak of a frightened pig. They are used principally in the shunting of trains, in yards and head houses, and are Intended aa warnings to the men who are directing the movements of the cars.

There’s the Rub.

“Well,” said the optimistic boarder, “here's ope thing about our boarding house; you can eat as much as you like there.” “Of course; same as ours.” replied the pessimistic one, “you can eat k as much *4 you like, but there’s never anything you could possibly like.**

LOCOMOTIVE OF NEW TYPE

Leviathan That Is Being Gfuilt In England for Use on Road In Mexico. > The largest locomotive ever built in the United Kingdom is now under construction 'in the workshops of the Vulcan Locomotive company at New-ton-le-Willows, Lancashire, It is designed for hauling exceptionally heavy loads long distances over very hilly country, and is being built for the Mexican National Railway company, who have ordered a number of the same type from the Vulcan Locomotive company. The weight of the engine, withont the tender, is 140 tons. It is a tank engine, and has an immense single boiler, the length of which is over forty feet. It is nearly three times as long as the boiler of an ordinary tank engine on a British railway. Firing and driving are controlled from the center of the locomotive and a double cab is built round the middle of the boiler. Driver and fireman hare separate cabs on each side. There are two separate furnaces, and a funnel at each end of the locomotive to draw off the gases from these. Behind each funnel is an immense sandbox, so placed as to keep the large bulk of sand absolutely dry. Portholes look from the central cabs to either end of the engine, which are both furnished with cow-catchers. The total height of thfe engine is over fourteen feet, and the length 56 feet. The two sets of six-coupled driving-wheels are only four feet in diameter. It will haul a load of 400 tons up the steepest gradient encountered in the mountainous country traversed by the Mexican railway.

Locomotive “Conversation.”

Tbq way locomotives “talk” is after this fashion; If the trainman should hear two long blasts from the whistle he would know it was a request for the releasing of the air brakes and that everything ahead was all right. Four short blasts of about a quarter of a second each would be instructions to the rear brakeman to go back with a red flag and protect his train from collision. Something had happened ahead which required holding it up. While the flagman is making haste to the rear he hears four long toots of the whistle, the engine telling him that the tracks have been cleared and that he is to return to the train as fast as his legs can carry him. If a train on approaching a signal finds it at danger the engineer cornea to a stop, and after waiting a reasonabel time for orders to proceed, which do not come, he gives four short snorts of the whistle, which immediately arrests the attention of the towermen or those who have in charge the particular signal that is holding the train up. Sometimes an engineer will become Impatient and the first four blasts will be followed by four others with only a few seconds intervening. He does not see why he should be kept waiting and manifests this impression by way of the whistle. Three long whistles, when the train la under way, fell the trainmen that a draw bar has pulled out or that a coupling has given way and that the train has been cut in two. This calls for hasty and careful attention, as all kinds of trouble threaten when this class of accident happens. If the first section is stopped too suddenly the rear one is liable to crash into it and strew the tracks with wreckage. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of property is destroyed every year because of the parting of trains.

Millions for Elevating.

All of the railroads of this country that operate within the thickly-settled sections of the big cities have been engaged for years in the work of eliminating dual crossings with the view to lessening the necessity of making day and night hideous to those living in the vicinity of the scene of operation. Millions and millions of dollars have been spent in this work and other millions will be expended in the' immediate future. The cost Incident to the elevation of tracks in Chicago alone approximates $1,000,000, while in and about Boston $15,000,000 is a low estimate of what has been put into this form of roadbed improvement. The elevation of tracks through. Lynn and at Harrison square will call for the expenditure of at least $5,000,000, while those contemplated at Waltham, Salem and at other points, will roll up an enormous bill on account of new construe-' tion. —Boston Olobe.

A Sympathetic Burglar.

A thoughtful burglar who broke into the bouse of Joseph Brown, Streatham Highroad, last week has earned the gratitude of Mr. and Mrs. Brown by returning through jy*e poet two highly prized miniatures, whose intrinsic value to the thief was inconsiderable. ’ The thief took £l2 or £l4 worth of portable valuables. Including a gold miniature locket containing the portraits of Mr. Brown's two UtUe boys. The parents were particularly sorry to lose the locket because the elder of the hoys died only a short time ago and 'the miniature oould not be replaced.—London Dally Mall.

No Trick at All.

Close flat—l saw a magician last night who made $lO bills disappear as though they had never existed. Bpendlt—Huhl 1 can do that