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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (April 13, 1913)
TIIE SUXDAT OBEGONIAX. PORTLAXD. . APRIL 13, 1913. 7 Hew The Park WILL HAVE His Naik Manicured Lion K NTBODT want a Job trimming- the toenails of "Xe ro," th African lion at the City park Thl Is tbe second call, and time grows short. There Is a crowd of City Park employes hoping that sons enterprising person will come along and volunteer to perform the task without further delay. Other wise they will hare It to do. "Nero" has to hare a trim. There's no other war about It. It has been discovered by Park Superintendent .Mische that his nails are about four inches in length, and are beginning to crow Into his paws. If an operation is not performed soon he will either get sick or become violent. If you've ever heard him roar yon can appreciate the reasons of the park officials for want ing to keep him from getting mad or violent. "Nero" Is 11 years of age, stands nearly four feet in height and Is close to nine feet from the tip of his tall to the end of his nose. He hasn't been weighed lately, but probably would tip the scales at close to TOO pounds. He Is one of the brggest Hons in captivity. and is considered one of the crosses t. He seems to have a perpetual grouch and refuses absolutely to make friends with any one. Even his trainer, Charlos Herman, has to feed him with a club. Plans for the operation on his toe nails are fairly well under way. It is believed a scheme has been framed which will make It possible to get the big brute cornered, give him a plant to chew on. and then whack off his nails as quickly as possible. Here Is how It Is to be done. First thev are going to drive him into his night cage, a big wooden box occupying a corner of his main steel cage, v nen he gets In this, a steel cage Just large enough to hold him well be cautiously shoved Into the main cage and over to the night cage, with the door open. Nero will then be poked out of his hid Ing place with clubs. Upon running out of his night cage he will find him self within the small cage and the door will be dropped forthwith. Then will begin the fun. The small cage with the big. roar Ing "Nero" enclosed will be carefully shoved over to the bars of the main cage. Rome, of the employes will pro ceed to worry him In front while some one else slips a rope cautiously about his hind leg. A half dozen men will then take hold of the rope and force "Nero's" foot slowly out through the bars. Ha will be given a plant to chew on In front. Getting his foot outside the bars, one of tbe workers will clip a couple of Inches of his nails off. Tbe same method will be used In trimming his other feet. "Nero has had the same Job done on him be-fore, and he has always put up a hard fight to protect hia nails. The last time It was tried he bit a two-by-four plank In two and bent his cage all out of shape. It took nearly a day to get him trimmed up. He was so pow erful that six men hanging to a rope tied to his hind leg had a hard Job holding It still enough to permit the man with the knife to get a whack at the nails. He put up a roar that could be heard to tbe center of town. The trimming of the toenails of Hons In captivity is necessary every few years. In the wilds lions and other animals wear their nails down by tramping on rocks. In a cage there Is no wear on the nails and they continue to grow until they turn up and bury their polnta in the flesh. n n n i i i i n Fi i i i fi h 1 1 ! i - I , ! j I i M i - - Ji A : .i r, ! - j J 4 i J U j 4 i w i t it' t : m I f H K I i 1 i l ? , ' ft I 1 - . 1ijk7 t fA ird lzl ir l- b - ; : J 1 71 these very people whom they began by murdering In cold blood. The whites were responsible for all the trouble in those early days. The Indians were peaceful and would have left the whites in peace if the whites had left them alone. The Indian had some of the very highest qualities of true manli ness. He was a strictly moral being. His bad qualities led the way to his destruction. He was too revengeful and he did not understand the possi bilities of union among his own people. Because of constant Jealousies and feuds, they had never been able to make much progress." Thompson Seton's Skunk Farm ERNl wr i RNEST THOMPSON SETON might rrlte another companion piece to "Wild Animals I Have Known" un der the title. "Skunks Who Are My Friends." for he actually knows the heart's secret of a skunk, having a lit tle farm of about two doxen of the animals penned up on his estate at Cos Cob. Conn. Mr. Seton haa Just sold his country estate, but bis little colony of skunks waa not disposed of with It. as he Is Interested In the pos sibilities of raising skunks for their fur as a commercial proposition. "Skunks are hardy little animals.1 said Mr. Seton. lifting one out of Its cage by the tall and flopping It down on the little table, from which It tried to escape in spit- of the firm grasp on its tall. , "There, there, now. Just calm down. Tansy," Mr. Seton said in a soft, purring voice, which is perhaps part of the se cret of his control over tne little black and white animals. "Just look at the fur; feel how soft It la I guarantee she will not harm you. If you want to look at her from another standpoint, wouldn't she make a beautiful muff? Tansy is a very valuable skunk, be cause, as you see. she is nearly all black. The less white In the fur tbe more valuable It la bkunks are not difficult .to manage: they are merely high-strung and must be handled gently. Not one of them has ever raised an odor In my presence, but some of my men have been made tar get by not using good sense. When the skunks first come in here fright ened to desth after having been caught in some trap, they are more or less nervous and must be handled In a gin gerly fashion. But we feed them well and take good care of them, and there Is no dsnger from them as long as they are treated Intelligently. Of course. It you go at them with a rush or scream, they are going to fight back. Their fur is at its best when they are about 1 years old, and their method of fight ing Isn't the most pleasant In the world. They breed once a year, and the fe rns U has as many as 1 to a litter. , "How do I keep them from running away? Most of this inclosure is built on ledges of rock. Between the ledges 1 have run wire netting, one foot deep snd three feet across. That keeps them. In spite of all their digging. You no tice that there Is not a particle ot odor about this place more than where any animals are kept. When the neighbors first heard that I was going to keep skunks here they were very much up set shout it and wanted to protest, but since there has never been any nuisance from this skunk farm tney have noth Inc to complain about." Mr. seton's estate, which covers well over 100 acres, hss been carefully kept In its natural state, and all about the house trees and underbrush grow in wild disorder. Many legends and as sociations lend an added charm. "This was the capital of the Stnawa Indians," Mr.- Seton explained. "Down near the gates was the chief village, and we continually plow up arrowheads and other relics of the old days. The In dians lived here until 1041. when the whites, under Captain Patrick, aur. rounded the place and burned it. mas sacring 1000 men. women and children. -The treatment accorded the Indian by white men has been shamefully wicked. They go about preaching: Christianity and pretending to convert' Indians', Ailments. There the those who. because of recent statistics which show that the North American Indian Is peculiarly a victim of tuberculosis. Jump to the conclusion that the red man, who leads an out of door life, ought largely to be immune If the open-air theory has snything in It. Such superficial critics fail to take Into account the fact that the life of the Indiana is not all out of doors.' and that in camp, or crowded together in a small community, they pay no attentlfslo the most ordinary rules of sanl tii lion. Tuberculosis is given as the most destructive disease among them. or 4z,04t inaians examined by the Government for disease last year. 6870; or 16.11 per cent. were tuberculous. At the Mescalero reservation school, in New Mexico, where the climate is nearly Ideal, 5 per cent of the children were tuberculous, and In Southern California over 10 per cent of the Indians suffer from the disease. The. Journal of the American Medical Association, commenting on these figures, says that, as in all primi tive races, alcohol is one of the Indian's deadliest foes. which is common to the Orleans fam ily. There ought,, of course, to have been a Princess of Orleans ready to welcome htm. but failing this, trusty Peter Neilsen threw his oil-stained arms round the popular Prince, saying;: "Luck to you. old boy!" As the Prince held in his hands a glass of champagne.. I asked him how be liked being a "flyer."' He answered promptly: "It is the finest thing In all this world." "And you will continue?" "Ramm and Ullidta, in a week's time, are going down to fetch the two hydro planes for the navy, and I hope to be ordered on duty with the hydro-planes, which I think will prove most useful to the navy." "And how do you like your teachers?" Flyers are always splendid fellows, and Peter Neilsen. Birch, and Ullidtz have all been grand vool, careful and jjlucky." "And what says V "By Jove! I must telephone to the Yrllow Palace", (his father's town resi dence). " . i. . Xhe colleagues of young Prince Axel are all agreed that he Is not only a first-rate fellow, but an intrepid aeronaut. Running to Schedule W'r re doing something quite won derful when we take a train weighing a few thonusand tons and bring it through from San Francisco to Chicago on time to the second. And it is won derful when the fact is considered that less than half a century ago the trip required nearer three months than three days, and such a things as com pleting the journey at an appointed minute was out of the question. This great feat, however, looks a good deal like a child hauling its tin train of cars around the kitchen when one considers the speed of one of the big comets. There is a comet that comes within sight of the earth every 575 years. Its tall is millions of miles. in thickness and many more millions of miles, in length. It was first seen, so far as history records, 1769 years before the birth of Christ. In a few weeks it faded from the sky. only to return in 11S4 and 619 B. C. The year that Julius Caesar died 44 B. C. It came again, returning in 631 and 1106 A. D. The last time it was seen was in 1681, when Sir Isaac Newton beheld it, and dis covered that comets are kept in their orbits by the sun, the same as the earth and the other planets. Two hundred and twenty-seven years have now passed since the comet dls appeared. Even if it has been traveling no more rapidly than the earth goes around the sun, its enormous bulk has been shooting through space at the rate of about 1,500,000 mile a day. Yet in 348 years from now in 2256 this same old comet that was already a well known visitor when It looked down UDOn the deathbed of Julius Caesar will again come within sight of those human beings, yet unborn, wno win then in habit the earth. Talk about a railroad train going half way across a continent in three days and reaching its destination on time, what Is such a performance as compared with -that of a comet that makes a trip 310.000,000,000 miles in 575 years and keeps so closely to its sched ule that it always bursts from the darkness at the moment that the as tronomers expect it? In the light of modern astronomy. comets are now chiefly interesting be cause they assist in demostrating the Immensity of space and tne greatness of the power that controls the uni verse. But there was a time when comets were alternately feared and praised. In the 15th century the Chris tians, already sorely pressed by the Turks, beholding In the sky a strange visitor, prayed to be saved "from the devil, the Turk and the comet." The pendulum of superstition had swung to the other side in the 19th century, and comets were supposed to have such a beneficial influence on the climate- that good crops were sure to follow. Wine growers advertised as comet wines" the beverages that tney nressed from grapes grown In 1811 and 1868. the excellence of which was at tributed to the comets that appeared in those years. New York Press. TMs Pretty Girl fhtou nd the Wdf M .She Already Has Covered Manx Ms Strange Lands and Is on Her Wayj C - o South Africa fc"' J W (''It -v. saS h- f v'-H r i 'V ; '', T'T vl 7 V f frfr &' 7 a' If- 1 . I. Alrcady He Has Made Several Daring Flights, One of Wnicn Nearly Cost Him His Life. ' rty vmmmimtemmmn mmmaiKBaKmwtnrn y--r---jrrr gr yj 7" ' fbT - - 1 ' i i i Hi --' i if 2B2tmm-tB ni,irtiii.a,-V iss iisr.ltlskT Tl ItojiesJi Tiwc SYarizzia , 7b HiaJZts jsrsatar'r Cerifcafe. COPENHAGEN, March 14. Prince Axel, of Denmark, a son of Prince Waldemar and the late Princess Waldemar, baa Inherited all his moth er's high spirits, and like her. he con stantly embarks upon ventures from which royalty generally keep aloof. Without the consent of the powers that be. the young Prince secretly took several flights on flying machines, one of which nearly ended in a fatal accident. As it seemed hopeless to keep him from these aerial adventures, he was ordered to go in for' aviation In bis capacity as an officer of the Danish navy. Within the last few days he has obtained his certificate with "flving colors." The examination for the certificate took place on the grounds of the Aero nautic Society. Lieutenant Paul Ramm officiated as Judge. Lieutenant Ullidtz. the instructor, having given the sign, Ulrich Birch, the well-known Danish aeronaut, tried his machine, which the Prince was to use, to see If everything was ship-shape. Then the Prince quietly went up and did not less than ten eletrant "eights" without any side-slips. Having shown bow steadily he could handle the 'plane, his Royal Highness eventually landed exactly on a designated spot. The examination was declared at an end, and the Prince was granted his certificate. Prince Axel, on descending, waa re ceived by his fellow officers present! with Axel!' Ragtime for the King ITOK the first time In the history of r England the King was played to the opening of his Majesty's Parliament in ragtime. All the glitter and glory of state coaches and crystal windows and emblazoned panels were ushered in, not to the splendid martial music of royal processions, but to the compelling strains of the lnevitaDie "Mitcny i.oo. In the midst of the misty grayness, when the guards were standing at ease, the band developed a fever of ragtime. The effect was wondrous. The magic lilt of "Hitchy Koo" set the whole crowd shifting from foot to foot, and every head bobbing to and fro in the ecstacy of ragtime. When the stately melody of "Wait ing For the Robert E. Lee" banged out at a quarter to two, every British heart must have tnriuea to tne spienuor oi the moment, with its memories of his toric- Parliaments. Finally, as the band played the en chanting and noble music or "come on and hear. Come on and hear Alexan der's racrtlme band," a spasm of pain crossed the faces of police and soldiers lining the roadway strong guardsmen had to bite their lips and grip their rifles firmer lest they should suddenly disgrace themselves forever by sway ing Into a onestep, aa every person was doing Demna tnem, in ine circumscnueu orbit of his position. The Ambassadors' state landaus rolled by, fairy-tale carriages, all bright yel low or scarlet, with the powdered and cockaded footman gripping their straps tightly for fear they should by the least perceptible movement of their pink and dignified calves betray the turmoil with them as they hear tbe music. Why Should You Yawn? YAWNING may be rude especially in company but it is a good thing for you to do. For one thing, it ventilates the lungs. When you take an ordinary breath the lungs are not completely filled, nor are they thoroughly emptied by an ordinary respiration. There Is a certain quantity of air left in the lungs always, which physiologists call "residual air." This air in time oecomes tout ana affects the blood, and through the blood, the nervous centers. Certain nerves get tickled, as it were, and tne result Is a yawn, stretching the lungs to their fullest extent, filling them with clean, fresh air and driving tne ioui air out. That's one reason why it is good to vawn. For another, yawning opens and stretches and ventilates all the various passages leading to tne lungs, xou will perhaps be surprised to know that yawning is even beneficial to your hearing. The cracking sound which you so often hear when giving an extra big vawn is due to the stretching and open ing of the eustachian tubes. These tubes communicate between the ear and the back of the throat. If they are con gested, which happens when you have a bad cold in the head, people complain of deafness. It you feel Inclined to yawn then do the cheer: "Long fly Prince so. It la natures way or cleaning out He smiled in that genial way I your lungs and air passages. BT HATDEN CHURCH. ONDON, March 27. (Special Cor respondence.) It is beginning to 1 look as if that adventurous American novelist. Jack London, would be 35000 in pocket before many months have passed. By the same to ken, an intimate friend of London's looks like parting with a similar amount as the result of an extraordin ary bet which he made with the author of "The Call of the Wild," a little over two years' ago. But then, London's friend deserves to lose his money, for the wager he made was against the resourcefulness and determination of an American girl, and everybody knows that an American girl, when she is on her metal, is prac tically unbeatable. Jack London does, anyway, and that Is why he unhesi tatingly staked 5000 "simoleons" on the proposition that Hilda Gilbert, who is a typically energetic and uncommonly versatile daughter of Uncle Sam, and fncldentally, good to look upon, could succeed In working her way around the world without any money except what she could earn on the way. Mrs. Hilda Gilbert, who Is now on the point of leaving for South Africa, after nearly two years of surprising experiences in this country end on the Continent, Is a dainty nine -ruv, n nrofualon of Titian red hair, provoking gray eyes, a peaches.-and-cream complexion and a trim figure. She was born in Buffalo, N. Y- where hr rather. C. H. Myers, is a wealthy ,or,fati.rpr. and after marrying m haste at the age of 14, she repented at leisure and was divorced four years afterward. At 19 she heard the West a-callin," and, going out to- California, h lived in the open. In time we una -nHtv. a. housa of her own in Gra ham's Canyon. Glen Ellen, Cal., which i. nnitA close to the home of the Lon- Anr, at Wake Robin Lodge. She was vnest for two monms in tne oum mer of 1909, and then it was that the wager actually was laid which sent this pretty and gritty Yankee girl off on such an enterprise as perhaps no woman, not even an American u, ever embarked on before. "The understanding was." said Mrs. Gilbert, "that I was to be given money en on a-h to take me across the ocean and leave me a few dollars after I got there, and that after that It would De up to me. 1 was m ij " ' through Europe, South Africa, Aua-t-aii. inn and the Philippines, and tr t 'ixneeded in doing so withia three years from the time oi alanine, ju.r. - . . ; cennn Hfv nwnra? jjonaon-was w -- Well, It's a wonderful experience, oi course, and I may write a dook aDoui It after Ira all over, ana x snuuiuu . surnrised either, if, in case I win out. Mr. London handed a generous propor tion of his winnings over to me. xieip from my father in case of need? No, hr. waa never any chance of that. for my father disapproves of the whole. thing too mucn to come ii mr however great a hole I might get in, and I have been In some iairiy ueep ones since I started on my trip." So off Hilda UUDert saiiea on me Lusitania January 6, 1911, ana since that time she has done a queer lot oi stunts for the sake of bread and but ter, if ever a woman did. She has surrg, masked, accompanying herself on the mandolin, in the Paris cafes; she has been a waitress in a London city tea- shop; she haa been a nun in -tne mir acle" and the manager of a ' beauty parlor in Bond street; sne nas motoreo. through Denmark, Germany and Aus tria as companion to a wealthy Eng lishwoman, lived "on the land" in a eotnmunlst colony, told American stories before a royal prince, posed for artists, studied Persian manuscripts at the British Museum, written short stories and incidentally found time to perpetrate a novel ana get it accepiea hv ti Enellsh publisher, who already has paid a substantial advance royalty. More than once, however, as you may imagine, she has been right up against it. more than once she has had to have dealings with "uncle," more than one wrathful landlady has neid up ner lug gage in lieu of payment that was not forthcoming, and "ore than once she has had no more than a vague idea where her next meal was coming from, yet when I talked with her, the other day, she was verily as cocky as a spar row, though she is not exactly rolling in wealth, and has Beveral more con tinents to conquer before she can claim to have won Jack London's wager for him. When she landed in the British me tropolis on January 18, 1911, she had exactly 10 shillings, or 32.50 in her possession, so she told her cabby to drive to the Hotel Cecil, and there re warded him wifh half a crown, thus reducing her available capital to about 31.80 in American money, a sum which would scarcely cover the rent of her room at the "Cecil" for one day. This hostelry, as no doubt you know, is one of the best in London, and Hilda Gilbert's action in putting up there on a cash capital of less than 32 is a typical piece of audacity on her part, which she excused, to some extent, in telling about it, however, by the fact that, as the globe-girdling feat she had attempted had been advertised to some extent in the London press, she was counting on getting a music-hall en gagement here just about as soon as she applied for one. That fond delusion vanished, however, before many hours had passed. It happened that the Lon don "halls" had had a lot of turns by various women who had been "in the news." Violet Charlesworth, the motor car embezzler and supposed suicide, was responsible for one of these, and all of them had been frosts, so the managerial hearts failed to warm to Hilda Gilbert's blandishments. , Then, all of a sudden she found her self on Easy street.- A friend in Amer ica who had owed her 330 forwarded a money order for that amount, which paid her hotel bill, and by the merest accident a tumble -downstairs she made the acquaintance of a well-to-do Englishwoman who was also stopping i at tne hotel and who, on being tola the story of Jack London's wager, promptly engaged the American girl and her companion on a motor car tour on the Continent upon which she was about to set forth. The salary of 325 week and expenses which Mrs. Cas well offered commended itself highly to Hilda Gilbert, and the two set off forthwith, traveling, in the English woman's car and visiting Stockholm, Berlin, Vienna and Brussels, where they parted company. The Englishwoman's social engage ments obliged her to return to England, and she wanted her "companion" to come with her, but Mrs. Gilbert's con tract called for some real work on the Continent, and she didn't feel that she had done any so far. Paris struck her likely field for a scheme she had in mind, so to the Gay City she went. She knows how to coax home highly agreeable music out of a mandolin, so she conceived the idea of warbling and playing to the patrons of some of the fashionable Paris cafes. To make the thing more piquant she wore a mask- not one of those ugly black domlnos. she explained carefully, "but a chic little silk one," and she did her gor geous tawny hair "very brain-storm,' to use her own expression. For the rest she wore ordinary evening dress and had a little page-boy, dressed as an East Indian, to take any money that might be forthcoming. v Less conservative than the London restaurant proprietors proved later, the Parisian ones raised no objection to her scheme, and she sang first at Maxim's, then at the Cafe de Paris, and afterwards at the Bal Tabarin snd other resorts of the City of Light. She came and went in a taxi, had only one disagreeable adventure in the three weeks she kept the thing up and made quite a lot of money. Foreettul or ner previous expe riences with British conservatives and flushed with her Paris triumphs, the American girl thought she could con quer the smart restaurants of London as effectively as she had those of Paris, so back she came across the "silver streak," as the small minority whrin it aoesr.'t make sick piayiuny term tne Enzlish Channel. She had an idea that she could do well, if not by playing and singing, then by selling flowers at the Savoy and tne canton ana otner smart hotels (for the feminine flower- sellers of the metropolis are a rear- some lot), but the brilliant scheme proved as complete a chimera as her former one of appearing at the London' halls had done. The managers of the Savoy and the. Carlton said "no" in their most Icy tone to the flower girl scheme and when the American girl had stormed the music hall managers a?ain with as much success as she had encoun tered the first time, she moved from the second-class hotel in which she was now abiding Into a plain boarding house and the legendary wolf took up a strategic position uncomfortably near her portals. The next few months (it was now August, 1911) proved the toughest time she had encountered since she set out to beat her way around, the world, being full of mighty plucky efforts, with mighty small results. Once, just when things began to get impossible and her then landlady (she had had several of them by this time) already was in possession of her trunk, she; saved the situation by writing and selling three short stories to a London magazine and getting paid for them in advance, which is a feat in itself, and she made several . attempts to be a newspaper women, but without landing a job. It would have come off right enough if she had had American editors to deal with, but the London ones are awfully afraid of novelties. One of them was worried lest it might be "unpleasant" for her, when she wanted to go up north and write up the big coal strike from trie standpoint of the strikers'' starving wives, and another was afraid she might hurt herself If she venteured; over the North Sea In an aeroplane. Meanwhile she prevented the wolf from getting in for a while by posing for a poster artist (one of the most popular "three sheets" in the tube, which advertised a compound used in, every household, immortalizes her fig ure, and to some extent her linea ments), and about this time, when Bostock advertised for a airl to Inarn lion taming, Hilda Gilbert answered the advertisement, but never got any reply. "Would you really have tamed lions?" I demanded when she told about this. "I would have tried," was the matter-of-fact reply. At present it looks as if the AmerU can girl really were going to "make good" with her music-hall act which) she has put on and she is rather de pending on It to take her to South, Africa. If all else falls, she may pocket her pride again, become a "seamstress'' pro tern and apply for what is known as an "assisted, passage" to the Cape. For she is going to get there and to Australia, Japan and the Philippines, too. Mob Government. Woodrow Wilson in "The New Free dom." I am not afraid of the American peo ple getting up and doing something. I am only afraid they will not; and when I hear a popular vote spoken of as mob government, I feel like telling the man who dares so to speak that he has no right to call himself an American. You cannot make a reckless, passionate force out of a body of sober people earning their living in a free country. Just picture to yourselves the voting population of this great land, from the sea to the far borders in the moun tains, going calmly, man by man, to the polls, expressing its judgment about publio affairs: Is that your image of "a mob?" What Is a mob? A mob is a body of men in hot contact with one another, moved by ungovernable passion to do a hasty thing that they will regret the next day. Do you see anything resem bling a mob in that voting population of the countryside, men tramping over the mountains, men going to the gen eral store up in the village, men mov ing in little talking groups to the country grocery to cast their ballots Is that your notion of a mob? Or is that your picture of a free self-governing people? I am not afraid of the judgments so expressed, if you give men time to think, if you give them a clear conception of the things they are to vote for; because the deepest con viction and passion of my heart Is that the common DeoDle. by which l mean all of us, are to be absolutely trusted.