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UMOST any day in ths big zoological
parks of New York and Fhiladel-
phla one may run across an artist
with modelins stand or easel set close to
the bam of the animate' cages, ' working
way as unconcernedly as he would tn
his owTl Mudlo.
Often there are people so close to his
Mbow as to Interfere with his work, and
Jthers tlp-toe!ng to see over the shoulders
of the near ones, all watching the sketch
take shape on the clean page or but of
the lumps of putty-like stuff piled on the
corner ot the modeling-stand. Some
times the artist has his canvas there and
his palette and colors, and Is actually
painting a portrait from life.
"How beautifully he poses." said a wo
man one day, as she stood watching
Charles It. Knight, the foremost Ameri
can painter of wild animals, put the
finishing touches on a life-sie head of
Sultkn, the famous lion of ths Bronx
Booloctcai park. 8h referred to the lion.
Til bet he'd like to get out and eat us
II up. though," answered another.
After his work was done. Mr. Knight
talked some of wild animals he had
known.
"The woman who sajd the lion posed
r.utlfully was just as absurd as the one
who thought ho wanted to' get out and
eat us. And 1 must say that in all the
hours and days I've spent before the
rages of wild animals I have never yet
heard a human being make a sensible re
mark about the animals. They do not
eem to understand them any more than
they understand the character of the sup
posed Inhabitants ot Mars.
Animals Do Not I'ose.
"Sultan wasn't posing. If he had
thought I wanted him to sit that way
he probably wouldn't have done it. There
Isn't a poseur among the cat animals.
They differ in that respect from animals
l!k the elk and deer, and from birds.
These have, their regular parados. The
liuck, when he gets his new antlers in the
Pali, goes on a parade before the doe.
The male rrairle chicken fluffs up his
feathers and struts before the hen. and
many other birds and beasts display self
ronsciousness and more or less spirit.
But the big felines hsee no spirit except
when they want something to eat. They
have absolutely no style, no carriage
neither cat animals nor dogs. A lion's
mane may be magnificent, his tail have a
fine big ball and his hack just ths proper
lope, yet the lion is always unconscious
of it: and as for posing, he is too stupid;
he wouldn't do it if he could.
'TVhen a lion paces about his cage he Is
rot wanting 10 get out and eat us up,
as the woman suggested. Aa a matter
of fact, he paces up and down merely for
exercise. People weary caged animals
and fret them, and 4t is a most grateful
arrangement in a zoo when there is a
place where thoy can retire from the
barred part of the cage and be free from
the gase of people. They hate to be al
ways In sight. Perhaps no animal hates
it so heartily aa the black leopard. He la
more restless under It than the rost. He
slouches back and forth In his cage and
never looks into the eye of a human,
though when he Is fretted to the limit of
hfs endurance he sometimes bares his
teeth and snarls in the direction of his
tormentors.
"But while captivity and people fret
lions and other caged cats, they never
eorspe becauso they have tried to. They
are too stupid to try- They are stubborn,
quick-scented, active, but not Intelligent
as animals go. And if tltey by accident
found their way out of a page, they
would not stop to devour any one who
chanced to be standing there they would
simply make a break for freedom." '
A Narrow K.scapo.
The big cats are perhaps the most pop
ular animal models among both painters
and sculptors. A. Phimister Proctor and
Ell Harvey, two of the leading sculptors
of wild animals, make quite a specialty
of cats, while Anna Vaughn Hyatt, the
one woman sculptor who makes a spe
cialty of wild animals, gives a fair share
of her attention to them. Miss Hyatfs
favorite cats are the tigers, and while
modeling a tiger at the Bronx she had
' one of many hair-breadth escapes by
which she has cheated some of her ill
natured models.
Miss Hyatt had placed herntodelng
stand cloec to the cage of Rajah, the
royal Bengal tiger that Is one of the
chief attractions in the Hon house of
the Bronx Park. The Treat creature
was sprawled upon the floor close to
the bars, apparently asleep. The guard
had' walked away, leaving Miss Hyatt
absorbed In her work. Suddenly, not
knowing why, she jumped back, and
Just In time, for without a warning
sound Rajah raised his great forepaw
and broujfht It down with a blow that
sent the wooden stand crashing: in
splinters to the floor, and the clay
model of himself In little wads scat
tered far and wide. ,
"I don't know tow I knew. It," say8
aap '
- '
fZAfST: FOCT-S.
Miss Hyatt, in recounting the occur
rence. "But without seeing him raise
his paw I knew he intended to strike.
It is a sort of sixth sense one develops
in working about wild animals.
n Milking Friends Willi Them.
"There is no such thing as. making
friends with wild animals." Miss Hy
att declares. "And the more pretense
of friendship a wild animal makes the
more he la to be' feared, as he will
take advantage of man when he least
expects it. Elephants seem so gentle and
tractable, and yet one of the Hagenback
elephants knocked me and my modeling
stand clear out of his stall one day with
out a sign of warning. In the same way
bears often seem to have a kindly feel
ing for their keepers, and yet the -owner
of a bear I once modeled told me he nev
er knew whether he would come out of
his rough-and-tumble act with the bear
alive, so treacherous is the bar nature.
"Why. one can't even trust the goata
in Central Park." added Miss Hyatt.
"One minute they come up and try to
chew my sketch pad or the clay In my
hands, and then as soon as my back is
turned they try to bowl me over."
Mr. Proctor has spent most of hir.tlme
on lions during the past two years, s he
was awarded the contract for four lions
In heroic sise for the base of the great
marble shaft which is to stand in Buf
falo in memory of President McKinley.
Mr. Proctor has become a familiar figure
to the frequenters of the Bronx Park
soo. as he had to make two complete
models exactly alike for the right and
left sides of the monument, and Sultan
was the model used. Tbe final models are
1 :
THE STTIfDAY
WHAT MEN WITH THE BRUSH
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eight times natural sice, and have been
completed but recently.
Liost Hi Tasto for Killing.
Mr. Proctor hopes to some day have
collection of models of his own. He has
bought a sixty-acre "ranch" not far from
New Tork. and is already stocking It
with cats of different kinds. His particu
lar favorite is the cougar, for he Is a
Westerner and his early years spent In
the Rocky Mountains seem to come back
to him when he Is modeling the mountain
Hon.
In the days before he became a sculp
tor he spent not of his time hunting
big game, and to quote him:
"I've shot everything wild in the West
but a buffalo and an Indian. There was
a time when I would have killed an In
dian, back in the old Crook days, but I
wouldn't do It now.. The Indian is splen
didnext to wild beasts I like the Indian.
He has the spirit of the wild. I don't
want any tame animals around. Even the
common cats that I have I keep wild by
putting their moat on a wire and making
them fight for It."
But Mr. Proctor wants all of his wild
animals alive. He has lost the lust for
killing them since he has become devoted
to his art. and his hunting jacket hangs
unused on his fatudlo walls.
His idea in having a collection of ani
mals of his own is that wild animals
confined in cages are never the real
thing. He believes further that no artist
can deal truly with animal life who only
knows animals in capitivity.
On this point Mr. Knight would take is
sue with the sculptor. Mr. Knight has
never hunted or killed a wild animal in
his life, and has seen very fe of ties
OREGONIAN, 'PORTLAND,
lKTM about the character,
creatures in captivity
v 4.-,
1 -
5
in their native haunts, and yet the chief
criticism of his fellow artists is that he is
too realistic.
Need or a Good Subject.
"It is not necessary to go into the wilds
to paint .wild animals," Is Mr. Knight's
claim. "I doubt 4f the greatest of all "the
European wild animal men was ever out
of Berlin. To have shot a "bear or a
moose does not mean that a man can
paint or model one any tootter. It Is
understanding tho nature and character
of animals that enables one to paint
them. FVora books and from naturalists
one may gather the facts as to habits
of animals, and before the bars of a
menagerie one gets the form- and color,
but within one's eelf must be the power
to understand their nature.
r "One trouble with many animal paint
ers is that they consider any animal of its
kind will do for a model. If they want
to paint a Hon they go and plaint the
first lion they come across. That lion
may not be a lion at all. Sultan and
some of the other lions in the Bronx are
no more alike than though they bore dif
ferent names.--
"When a man paints a lion he 'should
paint a good one, and the first thing
necessary is to know what" constitutes
a good lion. To begin with, it should be
perfect anatomically, which, few lions
bred in-captivity are. They have often
been injured in transit and confinement,
their backs are bent and their legs
crooked. The perfect lion has a fine long
head, a slight upward curve in the back
and a big ball of hair at the end of the
tall. Often the Hon In captivity has &
APRIL 28, 1907.
$ F IS f A
finer, mane than the one whose fllgnts
through the jungle have torn IiIb bushy
bair and given It a scraggly appearance. '
Imprcsslona, ?ot Facts, Wanted
J. M. Glceson, another painter of wild
animals, also holds that too much knowl
edge of the wild animal at home is a
dangerous thing to artists. He believes
that the province of art is to give im
pressions and not to state facts. He has
camped many Summers in tho woods
where wild animals roam, and feels that
it has been of llttlo benefit to him.
"The animals always get away so fast."
he savs, "unless they are standing still
feeding and one can get them standing
still in a cage." And so Mr. Gleeson goes
with his easel and his paint box to Cen
tral Park or the Bronx, and at one time
or another he ha painted everything
from a dromedary to a fruinca-pig.
Anotner of the artists often seen
sketching before the animal cages in New
Life-S aving Exploits of Prince Henry of Holland
THE LIFE-SAVING exploits of
Prince Henry of Holland in con
nection with the wreck of the Berlin
adds yet another name to the long
roll of royalties whose efforts in this
direction have been crowned with suc
cess. Princes who value popularity and
most Princes o value popularity, be
ing much like other people in this
respect cannot perform these sort of
acts too soon or too often.
The present Caar of Russia early rec
ognized this. Indeed, he was barely
16 when he saved a- poor moujik's child
from drowning in the icy waters of
the Neva. Later, during the terrible
fever-famine years of 1891-92, he vol
unteered for service on the relief com
mittee and personally visited ' some
hundreds of Infected families at the
Imminent risk of contracting the con
tagion. Nicholas the Csar ' was then, of
course, Nicholas the Czarewitch. or, as
he waa called in Russian peasant ar
trot, the "Naslednik," and his popular
ity was unbounded. How great and
terrible must be to him the change
from. those days to these!
Gallant Prince George.
And, by the way, the Czar was him
self upon one occasion saved from im
minent death by bis cousin. Prince
George of Greece, a unique Instance
of royalty rescuing royalty. The af
fair occurred in Tokio during the heir
apparent's tour round the world
Nicholas was attacked by an infuri
ated Japanese policeman, who tried to
Mod
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Tork Is F. G. R. Roth, whose small
bronzes show the humorous side of animal
life. And still another is Charles
Livingston Bull, whose animal pictures
have been in simost every magazine
during the past two or three years, and
whose assistance has been sought by
the best writers of animal stories in the
preparation of their books.
Gave Ip the Rifle for the Brush.
Carl Rutigius is a young German who
came over to America some years ago to
hunt big game, having signed an agree
ment to accompany the Gorman Emperor
.on ins next bunting trip to moke some
paintings of the Emperor as a hunts
man. ...
But by the time Mr. Rungius had spent
a season hunting In the Northwest he
was ready to pass up the German Em
perors hunting? party and settle down in
a studio in Brooklyn. Kach. year since
then he has spent several months in
slice off his head with a double-handed
sword, and who did actually succeed
In pretty severely wounding him.
Then, luckily. Prince George ran to his
assistance, and knocked the man down
with his walking-stick.
The Queen of Portugal and Queen
Maria Christina of Spain arc also
among the distinguished . ones. The
former once threw herself into the
Tagus to save her children from
drowning, and received a medal in rec
ognition of her bravery. Queen Maria
of Spain rescued a little girl from un
der the wheels of an express train at
the imminent riBk of her own life,
portion of her dress being torn off by
tbe footplate of the locomotive.
King Victor Emmanuel's popularity
among his people has greatly increased
since September. 1905. when he has
tened from his castle of Racconiggi to
the earthquake-stricken province of
Calabria. The shocks continued for
sme time- after his arrival on the
scene and his majesty, doffing his coat,
worked as hard as any ot his subjects
in rescuing the wounded from under
ruined walls and toppling buildings.
"It is my trade," he remarked grimly,
when remonstrated with for exposing
himself too rashly to imminent dan
ger. An enigmatical remark, seem
ingly, but one. In reality, not at all
difficult of Interpretation.
Fires have always had a peculiar
fascination for King Edward of Eng
land, and it was during a serious one
which occurred many years back at
Marlborough House that he performed
his one and only life-saving expollt.
He came near to losing his own life,
too. upon this occasion, for a burning-
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Montana and Idaho, in New Brunswick
or Alaska, and his studio walls bear evid
ence of bis marksmanship, while the
Wfttls of huntsmen's homes and art gal
leries' show that his brush Is as true to
his hand as his gun. One remarkable
feature of his pictures is that every
animat he paints is placed in its own par
ticular habitat, true to nature to the very
last blade of grass or flake of snow.
These artists are the chief ones in the
coterie of wild animal painters and sculp
tors who within the last decade have
made a place for thembelves in Ameri
can art circles. Look and you will be
reasonably sure to find one of these
names on the best animal pictures in
magazines and books or on the painted
or sculptured wild animals in art ex
hibitions or at the expositions. And.
though the name may not bo there, it is
moro than likely that the drawings of
wild animals in school text toooks, dic
tionaries and encyclopedias of recent date
are the work of .some of them.
beam in one of the upper floors gave
way as he was crossing it and only
by the exercise of tho utmost agility
did he avoid being precipitated into
the blazing Inferno below.
Curiously enough, an almost precise
ly similar accident befell upon an oc
casion Princess Waldemar. who . one
day crashed through the charred floor
of a house In a sub -rb of Copenhagen,
as she was crossing It with a rescued
child In her arms. But then her high
ness was In those days a most enthu
siastic amateur tirewoman, who saved
after this fashion not one only but
several lives, and even went to the
length of having her photograph taken
In uniform, with helmet and ax com
plete. Cures for Blushing.
- (New Orleans Times-Democrat.)
"A sreat many men blush." said a phy
sician, "some so painfully that they corns
to me to be cured.
'The cure I recommend is an odd one.
It is the abandonment of overheavy
clothing, especially of woolen socks.
Amazing it ts how many male blushers
have a , predilection for thick socks of
wool.
"But some blushers wear light enough
clothes To them I can only recommend
a nerve' treatment. I advise them t5
make speeches at banquets, to be wit
nesses in murder trials, to go to teas and
dances, to develop, in short, the nerve aa
a wrestler develops his muscle.
"Blushing Is a difficult disorder to
cure. As a rule it passes away of itself
when the victim reaches hi3 thirty-fiftlt
year."