FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1938
Historic
Hoaxes
88
By ELMO SCOTT WATSON
VERNONIA EAGLE, VERNONIA, OREGON
PAGE ELEVEN
Fun for the Whole Family
Western Newspaper Union.
The Gold Machine
A LCHEMY, the professed art of
transmuting baser metals imto
gold, has been one of man’s dreams
for ages. But it remained for a
Connecticut Yankee to give it a
practical application which, meta­
phorically speaking, lined his pock­
ets with $200,000 worth of gold ob­
tained from credulous investors in
his “gold accumulator.”
This was the invention of Pres­
cott Ford Jernegan, once a minis­
ter of Middletown, Conn., who in­
terested Arthur W. Ryan, a jeweler,
in his plan for extracting gold from
sea water. In February, 1897, Jer­
negan lowered into Narraganset bay
in Rhode Island, his “gold accumu­
lator,” a flat box containing a small
battery, quicksilver and other
chemicals and constructed so that
the sea water flowed over the quick­
silver. When the box was raised 24
hours later what appeared to be
gold was discovered in place of the
quicksilver and the jeweler’s tests
proved to his satisfaction that it was
real gold—$2 worth.
So he joined with Jernegan in
forming a company and selling
$500,000 in stock. A plant was built
at Lubec, Maine, and the two “ac­
cumulators” began bringing up
increasing amounts of gold This
went on for more than a year. Then
in July, 1898, Jernegan went to Eu­
rope and at the same time an em­
ployee named Charles E. Fisher
disappeared. The “accumulators”
ceased to produce gold, for the very
good reason that Fisher, who was a
professional diver, had been placing
the precious metal in them before
they were brought to the surface.
When the frauck was exposed, the
directors of the company who
had been made victims of the
fake, gave back the profits they
had made and eventually the stock­
holders recovered about 36 per
cent of their investment. There
was some talk of trying to extra­
dite Jernegan from Europe, where
he was living off the $200,000 he
had obtained from investors, but
nothing ever came of it.
Q ua K
Line and—
By OJ>om.
WHEN A
PHONE
SALESMAN
CALLS YOU,
if you
put
recener
on the
hoo <— ,
YOU VJÖAif
By C. M. PAYNE
S’M ATTER POP— One Point for Old Timer
MESCAL IKE
Account of It Seemed Like a Good Idea
By S. L. HUNTLEY
• • •
Nature Faker Par Excellence
'THE modern champion of all writ-
ers of nature fakes was un­
doubtedly “Lester Green,” of Pros­
pect, Conn. No matter how pre­
posterous his yarns, which several
metropolitan newspapers printed
for the amusement of their readers,
there have always been some peo­
ple who have believed them.
When he told how a setting of
hen’s eggs, which he had found in
a block of ice taken from a flooded
meadow, hatched out chickens cov­
ered with fur instead of feathers,
a Canadian farmer wrote to him
and wanted to buy some.
When he declared he had dis­
covered the fluid responsible for the
curl in pigs’ tails and his wife had
obtained beautiful permanent waves
by rubbing it on her hair, “Mrs.
Green” was flooded with requests
from women for samples of this
magic fluid.
When he told of spraying his apple
trees with glue, which not only pre­
vented the apples from falling but
also preserved them in a fresh con­
dition on the trees throughout the
winter, both American and Canadi­
an glue manufacturers wrote to ask
what kind of glue he used, hoping
to get a good “testimonial.” One
Boston firm even sent a repre­
sentative to Prospect to investigate
his stunt.
And these are only a very few of
the marvelous achievements of
“Lester Green" who was, by the
way, the brain child of C. Louis
Mortison, Prospect correspondent
for the Waterbury (Conn.) Repub­
lican-American.
• • • •
rA
\ (A
Delinquent
FINNEY OF THE FORCE
F iaws / ■
Y ez
cam 'T
BE TwO
PLACES
AT OUCE
UNLl SS
YEZ BE
T win S
r—•’
By J. MILLAR WATT
POP— When a Man Doesn’t Miss Sleep
Spectrist Poetry
TAURING the second decade of
U the present century there was
a sudden growth of new “schools”
of poetry and art, among them such
cults as Futurism, Vorticism, Cub­
ism, Dadaism and Polyphonic
Prose.
So in 1916 when the publication
of "Spectra: a Book of Poetic Ex­
periments” was announced, it was
hailed with delight by the “eman­
cipated souls” who were struggling
for new methods of self-expression.
The authors of this volume were
“Anne Knish” and “Emanuel Mor­
gan” and immediately they had a
host of imitators who wrote the new
Spectrist poetry. Nobody could un­
derstand it. of course, but that
made it seem all the more impor­
tant.
Then the whole movement was re­
vealed as a hoax which had been
fathered by two authentic poets.
Witter Bynner and Arthur Davisson
Ficke, who used this method to sat­
irize the current fad in new poetic
cults. But, in a sense, the joke
was on them. For those who had
been duped and had become dev­
otees of “Spectrism” insisted upon
continuing to write their verses in
that form and to perpetuate the
new “movement,” which still flour­
ished among some of America’s
intelligentsia.
Borax From Chile
From Lake Ascotan, in Chile, 15,-
000 feet above sea level, is obtained
half the world's supply of borax.
MY GOODNESS!
That Was Why
8HE GAVE UP!
He—You look like a sensible girl.
Teacher (pointing to a deer at the Let’s get married.
They tell of a shiftless character
She—Nothing doing. I’m just as who
zoo)—Tommy, what kind of animal
piled into bed one night after a
sensible
as
I
look.
—
Stray
Stories
is that?
coon hunt, with all his clothes on,
Magazine.
Tommy—Gee, 1 dunno.
including boots. After a while his
wife shook him, “Get up. You got
Teacher—Oh, come now. What
Coln-Cidenee
your shoes on."
does your sister call your brother?
“I’m a coin collector."
Tommy—Gosh! Don’t tell me
“So am I! Let’s get together and
To which he mumbled, “That’s all
right. They ain't my good ones.”
talk over old times."—Boys' Life.
that’s a louse!
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