E ILOSOPHY PRED W. STOWEL^U m/mmmn^m* tittiii Rnnk T77l^.^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 'iM FRED \V. STOWELL, RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY BY FRED W. STOWELL The Trade Supplied by THE SAN FRANCISCO NEWS COMPANY SAN FRANCISCO. CAL. THE L'SRAWY »F CUNGRtaS, Two CoHea Receives APR. 22^902 OOPYKIWHT eHTRr COPY a. 1^^ COPYRIGHT 1902 FRED W. vSTOWELL COMMERCIAL PUBllSHING CO., PRINTERS S. E. COR. Mission & First ST8.,S. f. CONTENTS: PAGE The Twentieth Century's Dream 9 Nova Persei : 11 Professor Pangnos and His Ideagraph H The Account 12 The Analysis , li> Fallacy of Immortality 18 Story' of a Keporter's Syndicate 23 Tales from Tampa : 32 The Scoop That Failed 32 O'Shauglinessy and the Queen 34 Censor and Correspondent 37 Electric Cavern of Las Savinales 42 Tale in Which the Moral is Made to Precede the Story 47 Awheel to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado 52 The Baile at Clifton: 63 As It Was 63 As It Might Have Been 64 The Apacheid, an Arizona Epic of the Eighties 65 Night in the Desert 67 Cleopatra's Soliloquy 68 BiOTOPSis, a Plagiarism After Bryant. 71 Ragtime: 74 In the Case of an American Dreyfus .... 74 Honesty as a Handicap 77 In the Matter of Oliiiations 80 Brute Brawn and Brute Brain 81 Of the Use of a Word 82 Lynch Law, the Great American Referendum 83 Poets of To-day, Yesterday and the Day Before 85 Fraternity of the Frontier 99 ILLUSTRATIONS: PAGE Frontispiece. " I'll Play My Signal Code upon a Eay of Light and Talk with Mars " 8 Loitering on the Pier at Port Tampa 33 Looking Toward Port Tampa 35 Where They Gathered for Small Talk 36 Transports Dressed for the Day 39 A Characteristic Landscape in Florida 41 A Storm in the Grand Canyon 53 Looking Across the Grand Canyon from the Saddle of Ayer's Peak 55 Ayer's Peak with Its Castellated Summit 57 The Rider Gives His Wheel the Outer Post, the Place of Honor 59 The Grand Canyon from Moran's Point 61 INTRODUCTION : The writer presents in book form a collection of articles which may have a passing interest. Some of these have appeared in the daily press ; others in weekly publications. FRED W. STOWELL. San Francisco, April i, 1902. I'LL PLAY MY SIGNAL CODE UPON A RAY OF LIGHT AND TALK WITH MARS." Cbe Cwentletb Century's Dream. The Clwrubims sword from its keeper is wrested; With the flame of its hiade will I hIazo% my ivay Till the City of God hy my sciewce invested Shall hoist the white pennant, sign truce for a day. Stepping- from out the t^Yilig•ht of earth's morn With quickening- strides I hasten toward the full White luster of meridian. Prom- ise ]My tolven is; my word I give to show The unfulfilled fulfilled, till Rea- son stand As nude as Truth, unbiased, un- ashamed. The TAventieth Century I. an op- timist. But not with unconditioned faith who sees Through Hope's bewildering eye the things as I Would have them be, nor let the vision so Pervert my judgment. Mine it is to wrench The shackles from the fettered brain; to loose The potent forces of the atom, where, Perhaps, may lie within its micro- cosm A world and all its little sophis- tries. The^ dust upon an insect's wing, the mote Still dancing in the day, may hold unleashed Some energy to hurl this globe outside Its pathway round the sun and drive afar Beyond Creation's realm of things that are Up to the veiy zone of Chaos, which Encircles Space behind the ulti- mate star. Mine shall it be to solve gray mysteries. ril play my signal code upon a ray Of light and talk with Mars. Planets shall be Like neigboring villages and the fixed stars Not gleaming points, but nightly discs disclose. 10 RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY The earthglow on the hidden Sweet, heavy vohime of the deep hemisphere siib-bass Shall picture l^ack one-half the Shall hear, and eyes no cogniz- secrets of ance that take The moon, and each vibrating Shall see above the violet ray. beam shall be Each sense \ messenger to bring nnblnrred May quicken till the brain shall its sure And faitliful copy. I will draAV the stings Of evil from the fetid, blackest cells Of sourest pessimism, until the mass Shall sweeten to a better purnose; from The ether's void a new creation call And build tlie links of evolution with Strange forms, strange life, strange elements that men ]May grasp the hands of gods and comrades be. learn to tell The messages a million forms of force Since primal time have cast upon the screen Of life unread, till thought shall know itself. I'll seize the key of science and unlock Tlie rocks. The heart of things shall be as clear As now the surface is; the desert yield Its tilchings from the sun. It may be mine To strip the Tree of Knowledge almost bare, A solitude of beauty lies without And turn aside the Flaming The world of mind. Ears that Sword that keeps are deaf to the The way before the Tree of Life. Rust edges the sword that iras flaming and caustic; Set the fools hi their folly each free to engage, For the earth is an ancient; the dream of the gnostic Twists a vision of strengtli to tlie nightmare of age. nov>a Persei: Professor Pangnos and Ris Tdcagrapb. UPS ALA, :N'ov. 31. — In the Svenska Stjerna, which came from the press to-da}^, appears the most remarkable paper which has ever found place in a. scientific publication. It is from the pen of Professor Pangnos, considered the most learned man in all Sweden, the head of the Eoyal Swedish Astronomical Society and professor of astronomy in the University of Upsala. The Sven- ska Stjerna, in which the article is printed, is one of the most reliable scientific magazines in Europe. Briefly, Professor Pangnos professes to have established com- munication with other worlds. Testa's theory that recent electri- cal phenomena, observ^ed in the Rocky mountains, were the result of the efforts of the inhabitants of Mars to communicate with Earth is far surpassed by the daring statements of the Swedish astronomer, who claims to be in communication with a being whom he terms Alfomeg, dwelling on V, one of the minor plan- ets revolving about the star Nova in the constellation Perseus. Pangnos claims to communicate with Alfomeg by means of an instrument which he calls the ideagraph. He declares that with this communication is ahnost instant, and that across the great gulf of ether he can converse with no more sensible loss of time between question and response than in ordinary conversation by telephone between citizens dwelling remote from each other in Sweden. Pangnos claims to use a ray of light upon which to send his thoughts to x^lfomeg, and to receive answer by the same medium. Now it is well known that it takes years, some say centuries, for light starting from Nova to reach Earth, but Pangnos says that since the first Novan ray struck the earth there has been an in- 12 RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY. finite continuance of rays, and once the light circuit is complete it serves as the medium, so that the ideagraph, sending its mes- sage out into space on a ray of light, covers the distance so rap- idly that it overtakes the light particles which have left earlier, even for centuries it may he, much as a telegraphic communica- tion is sent from a railway train in advance of train and pas- sengers. The talks between Pangnos and Alfomeg are set forth in full (talks is not the word, but there is no English equivalent for the Swedish term used), with much scientific data and explanation. As nearly as this can be explained to the lay mind it is a gigantic form of interstellar telepathy founded on scientific lines and made possible by the use of the ideagraph. Pangnos does not claim to talk the language of Alfomeg, but he says thoughts were before words; that he is enabled to read the thoughts of Alfomeg, and that as these thoughts come through the ideagraph, he has set them down in Swedish. He uses his own words with which to give form to the thoughts of Alfomeg. The first paper tells of the Novan creation as explained by Alfomeg. It is along lines of evolution, but departs somewhat from the ac- cepted views of evolutionists of this world. The account folhiws: Cbe jUccownt. In the beginning was Xova, and Xova was tlie universe, filling all space. And there were light and motion ; and the light was faint like a reflection from a cloud, and the great sphere of si^ace turned slow- ly on its axis. And this was the Cycle Aleph. And the sphere turned faster and the light grew stronsfer, and Xova no longer filled the sphere, but shrunk within itself and without was the great void, of space, and this was the Cycle Beth. Faster and faster turned tlie sphere, and a great ring was loos- ened from Nova, and it, too, turned faster and faster in space, and between the ring and Xova was a great void which always NOVA PERSEI. 3 3 grew wider, and the ring was without and IS^ova was the center. And the ring was like a great band of pale flame, and it was named Onav. This was the Cycle Gimel. In tlie fourth cycle, which was Daleth, Xova shrank within it- self one-half, and a second ring of hright orange flame was formed, and between it and the first ring were millions of miles, and between it and Nova, which the second ring also encircled, were other millions of miles, and as it turned it broke in three, and each of the three parts gathered to itself about a center, and each became a sphere of blazing red, and each took its own orbit about N^ova. In the course of myriads of ages one part became the planet On, and a second became the planet Ov, and a third became the planet Va. And Xova shrank within itself yet once more by one-third its measure, and there was another ring, and this ring broke in four, and after other myriad ages there were the lesser planets A and V and and N, and each shone with a violet light. And this was the Cycle He, and there were the great sun Xova, with its furious light, and the lesser planets A and V and and X, and the greater planets Va"and Ov and On, and of these On was the greatest and X the least, and beyond was the great ring Onav, and beyond was great space, and beyond was nothing. And this ended the Cyclei He and the Cycle Vav began. In the Cycle Vav the planets, too, shrank within themselves, and from the greater of these came other rings, and these rings, in turn, broke and became moons, and each moon revolved about its own planet and followed the orbit of its planet about Xova. And dark patches appeared on the smaller planets, and their light was much obscured, but the great outer ring became less pale, and Xova shone with greater fury. At the uttermost bounds of space were now other and many faint lights, and these were the stars, and the universe was changed. This is the Cycle Zayin, which is yet. In this age life began — nay, not began, for always there was life; even to the first in the 14 RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY. parent Nebula, from which our sun, Nova, was begotten, and in turn begot the planets as well the lesser as the greater, and the great ring Onav. For life and change are. Each atom is alive. It hath its likes and its dislikes, its love and its hatred, its mo- ment of strength whence quickly it passeth to old age in the twinkling of an eye. But the manifold life in which myriads of myriad atoms go to make the creature it did surely, begin in the Cycle Zayin, on the planet V. For little by little the great furnace of sp-ace had cooled. The fury of Nova grew less fierce, and on the planet V there came a time when there were heat and cold, and the clouds formed. Clouds of iron there were and of gold and of copper — and a chill came over space. The £eons passed and there were other clouds, and the Cycle Zayin had reached its noon, and in the thirteenth hour on the planet V there was a great change; oxygen and hydrogen had been wedded and steam hid the face of the new planet. And yet within the thirteenth hour the surface . in spots showed firm and the steam chilled on the hemisphere, which turned away from Nova, and the great void drew out the heat until the rain de- scended. The rain fell, but as it fell it turned to steam again. And when the thirteenth liour was on the wane there was land on V, and it was rock, and all above were weeping clouds and all within was seething flame. There were land and sea, and the clouds parted! and Nova was a great steel-white, glowing disc, and the planets shone, some with constant force and some only when Nova lighted up their faces. Then life was in new form, and there wore plants and animals, and there were plants before there were animals, and there were plants which began to be of higher form after the lesser things, which began to move of their own will, had already long been. Changes there were in land and sea, and in atmosphere, and V was like a great hot-house which forced strange living forms, and the species differed which had been one. Life took to itself new shapes and the thirteenth hour of the Cycle Zayin was well-nigh ilone. And when it was done, and the fourteenth was begun. NOVA PERSEI. 1 5 there were creatures which thought aud some there were which tenanted the air and some the hand and others the sea. And be- tween those which dwelt upon the land and those which made midair their homes was strife^ and the war is yet,, for each in his own way doth think and plan strategem and cruelty. The creatures of the air are fierce, and they rush to war with great zeal. They fear not slaughter of their own kind, but go to the strife without heed of danger. Neither do they heed their wounded, nor do they heed their dead, for the dead, they are dead, and the wounded are but hindrance to the battle. We of the land are not so heartless, for the sufferings of our kind greatly move us. Pity and compassion we have. I, who am of the land, cannot endure those who are of the air, for each hath a different form of brain and peace between us there can never be. For the people of the air care for naught but cunning, and all things which they cannot use for selfish profit are meaningless to them, while to us the theory of thought is beautiful, and that we may think and reason in security we have made of caves our cities and our fortresses. Cbe Jlnalysis, Some strange discrepancies appear in the account of the Novan creation as outlined in words by Professor Pangnos, who claims to have received the ideas from Alfomeg, a dweller on the planet V, one of the lesser bodies of the Novan system in the constella- tion Perseus. Whether his account was bulled by cable or wire in the transmission from Upsala to San Francisco, or whether errors were made in the translation from Swedish into English I cannot say. ' If the higher criticism were applied to this narrative of an evolutionary creation of another universe, the story would be found faulty. It does not hang together. In fact, there seem to be two accounts which have been rather skillfully joined. Ap- parently the earlier portion of the narrative was the thought of 16 RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY. one being (I caniiot sa}' man, for Pangnos has not given us any data as to what the embodied intellectuality on the planet V may be), while the latter part was the work of another brain, or con- sciousness. It is regrettable that more detail was not given by Professor Pangnos. Who Alfomeg may be he does not say. His article in the Svenska Stjerna leaves much to guess. His method of com- munication with another system of worlds is given but the barest mention. It seems to be a very high order of mind-reading, of telepathy, which knows neither bounds of distance nor of time, of thought rays riding a beam of light, much, as electricity uses a wire for its conductor. I am not sutBciently versed in astron- omy to say whether Pangnos is correct in his assumption that the light now reaching earth 'from Nova has been centuries on its way. Admittedly it is a journey of years, but whether it is one of three 3Tars or of three thousand years I am frank to say I do not know. As to the discrepancies in the account, Pangnos may hold for all I know that Alfomeg is not infallible, and that the story of thi3 Novan creation may be told as Alfomeg believes it to have been. That, of course, is a plausible, it may be a correct, theory. Of one thing there is a hint of difference between beings in the Planet V and on earth. It seems that there are two forms of life on Y which have about equal intelligence, if Alfomeg or Pangnos may be credited. It is much as if some bird, known to earth, the eagle, we will sa}^, was equal in intelligence to man, and as if there was a struggle for mastery between mankind and eagiekind. Alfomeg distinctly states that war has always been on the Planet V between dwellers on land and the tenants of mid- air. So evclutioil there must have produced not one type of life, as man on earth, but two, one apparently with the perceptive and physical over-development, and the other with greater re- flective and reasoning power, and each about equal in the strug- gle for existence. The fittest to survive were two, not one. As to the description, I take it, that Professor Pangnos does NOVA PERSEI. 17 not pretend to give an exact account. He would not, for the rea- son, as he states, that ideas were before words. He merely pro- fesses to embod}^ the ideas of Alfomeg in his own Swedish lan- guage. Naturally, with so serious a subject, he drops into the archaic in the terms he uses. As to the C3^cles, whatever Alfomeg calls them, even if he has a spoken language, Pangnos wisely took the Hebrew letters in sequence as befitting terms, high-sounding, sonorous, and much more pretentious than the modern numerals. As to the life itself on V, one man's guess is as good as an- other's. It may be that Alfomeg represents the highest attain- ment to which the Articulata, as contrasted with the Vertebrata, may reach. His mentality may be greater than that of man. It may be that in some ways he excels man, in others falls below. It may be that the physical form of life on V is so different from all forms known to earth that we can have no knowledge of it. Possibly Alfomeg has consciousness of the outer world, not with such senses as we possess — of .sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell — but by means of organs especially adapted to gain sensa- tion through the Eoentgen, ultra-violet and X-rays, and the many forms of energy which we know to exist, but which we cannot perceive until they have been translated into other terms of en- ergy with which our organs of sense can take cognizance. It is an interesting field for speculation. The regret is that Professor Pangnos has given so little. fallacy of Titimortallty. To the man who sees wdth the eye of faith a life beyond the grave argument has no appeal. To him whose beliefs have shrunken away, until what is left is but the withered kernel of a hope for the hereafter, there will come a time when he must stare truth in the face. The last years of the century just closed have shattered creeds and dogmas. Doubt is everywhere among thinkers. Kevelation has lost much of the authority It once had. The evangelical churches have been leavened with liberalism. Be- tween unitarianism. and agnosticism there is no quick line of cleavage. There is no data with which to prove what percentage has broken with orthodoxy. It is sufficient to know that it is a large one. The trend away from supernaturalism is unmistak- able, but even with the agnostic and liberal classes (perhaps masses might be a more accurate term), there is much to show that men still cling to a vague hope in immortality. It is the purpose of this article to show the fallacy of this hope. There has been something of a play in discussion upon the word "immortality,^^ but I mean to use it in its restricted sense of a conscious personality persisting after death. The immortal- ity through a long line of descendants may illustrate the parable of the seed, but it is not an immortality of self. The theory that matter is indestructible has been advanced to prove immortality. For all we know every atom which went to make a part of the White City of the World's Fair is still in existence. The city is not. Every molecule which ever formed a part of any being born into the world may still be, but it is not the immortality of a few moldering bones, a handful of dust, vapors cloud-scattered, for whicli man hopes. Every particle which entered into the make- up of some forgotten hero, who gave his life for his country at Thermopyle may have been present in some poltroon of a Greek, FALLACY OF IMMORTALITY. 19 who fled like a cur before the Turk's advance on Larissa. That would be a regrettable sort of immortality, but it could hardly be regarded as a persistence of self after death. But all this is neg- ative. *; An immortality which does not consist of an existence of self, the persistence of the individual with all, or some, at least, of his mental characteristics, is not an immortality worth consider- ing. Outside of revealed religion there is little argument to sup- port a belief of an existence after death; and since revelation has come to be disregarded by so many, it may be permissible for those of us who have cast aside the traditions of orthodoxy to in- quire if there is a basis for any hope in a personal hereafter. If conscious self, the soul, if you so choose to call it, is to persist after death, if it is a something, an entity indestructible, is it not reasonable, then, to ask whether it has not had an in- finite existence in the past? If its future is unending, everlast- ing, ought it not always to have been ? If this soul has developed with the body, why should it not die with tlie body? If it had a beginning, when did it begin ? I do not suppose that think- ing people now believe that the child at the moment of birth be- comes possessed in some miraculous way of a soul. It is hardly reasonable to think that souls are hovering around in some hazy, nebulous condition, waiting the exact time of birth to take up a human abode. If this were so, w^hat would happen if there were not enough souls for the number of children born, or an overplus of souls? Ought we not to have in some instances children with two, three, or a dozen souls, and others with none ? Then, again ; where the child is born before the full time, how is the soul to know and be ready for its miraculous incarnation? On the other hand, the prenatal existence of the soul along with the embryo presents its difficulties. From the very first there is life, and if there cannot be life, that is, human life, without an accompany- ing soul, then in all prenatal stages the soul must be present; and, if then, why not before in the cells as they exist before the inception of the individual? Since spermist and ovulist hold ex- 20 RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY. actly opposite views as to the cell which is developed into the in- dividual, so they must disagree as to the cell in which the soul is conceived. The parent cells have life and at their union develop along fairly well-ascertained lines. Does each have a half soul and the two unite to make one soal ? To those, who do not have faith in the supernatural it cannot appear reasonable that tlie soul attaches itself at any particular moment to the individual, or to that which may become the in- dividual, whether that moment be at birth, at some period of pre- natal life, or even before then to one of the cells, capable if all conditions prove favorable of final development into a human being. Since nature is lavish in providing for the sequence of life, ■so that one individual results where the possibilities are multi- plied, shall we ascribe souls to the myriad of cells which fail of their purpose — a persistency of self to what might be called the waste products of nature? Can a soul be without a miracle? Would unconscious continuance of self be immortality? We know that we are. There is a place in the past back of which we do not know that we were. Beyond death we do not know that we shall be. Throwing aside the authority of revelation, all that we do know is that there is a persistence of self for a lim- ited time. Is consciousness so much of a marvel that it must he unending? Is there reason to believe that it exists as a force different from all other forces, inconvertible into any other form of energy and ungoverned hy any natural laws? Destroy the e3^e and sight ceases. Total deafness is not unknown. Cer- tain physical changes annihilate the senses of taste, toucli and smell. Lesions of the brain affect the mind. Personality itself suffers in mental infirmities, but the orthodox, and many who are not orthodox, would have us believe that the soul, or self, per- sists unchangeable, unaffected and immortal. If the eye by physical injury may become incapable of the function of sight and the brain by physical injury become incapable of the function of consciousness and other mental manifestations, why should we differentiate the two? Why should we not have an immor- FALLACY OF IMMORTALITY. 21 tality of eyesight as well as an immortality of mind, soul, con- sciousness or self? Is mentality on any different plane than di- gestion? The stomach does not go on with an immortal perform- ance of its function after death. The brain ceases to act after life ceases. Is there anything more remarkable aibout the cessa- tion of the operations of the one than the other? Is there any reason in declaring that there is an undying entity connected with the result of the action of the nerve-cells and not with the mus- cular molecules? May not conscious energy be convertible into unconscious force, into heat, light, electric or other forms? An unconscious personality would be a poor substitute for immortal- ity. Unless conscious self persists without a break is not im- mortality a fallacy? Consciousness does not exist without interruptions. If it can cease for a little time, can it not cease for a longer time, or for- ever? In sound sleep does not consciousness cease, and the sub- conscious faculties keep up the work of maintenance of life? If it be held that it does not entirely cease, but merely approaches the point of cessation, would that alter the argument? If one should die in his sleep and the persistence of self after death should be that of sound sleep, would that be a conscious immor- tality worth having? If the slight physical changes incident to sleep so nearly annihilate the conscious self for a period of hours, is it unreasonable to ask if the absolute destruction of tissue, the ■ greatest physical change possible, should not annihilate the soul beyond the grave? There is a stronger argument than the phenomena of sleep. Under the complete influence of an anaesthetic the mind is a blank; consciousness is obliterated.' If death comes during that condition, what is to awaken consciousness? If small physical changes can produce a temporary cessation of conscious self, will not the cessation continue under the greatest change ; or will we have an immortality under a condition of continued anaesthesia? Is that worth having. Is it immortality at all? Is it anything more than the existence of the dead trunk of a tree, a clod of 22 RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY. earth, a cloud of smoke — the immortality of iineonscioiisness, a continued state of death? The arg-ument is sometimes advanced that evolution promises immortality, that nature adapts herself to all conditions and de- velops to meet every emergency. Animals change their struc- tural forms to meet new environments, new wants; so to meet the need of continued personal existence nature may provide im- mortality. That presupposes that nature has need for individual immortality. Are not the facts these, that nature is prodigal in her preparations to provide for the continuance of the species and merciless as to the individual? Changed structural forms come after long struggle with new environments. The individ- ual perishes in the struggle, hut gives to posterity an imoulse, a potentiality that triumphs over seemingly adverse conditions. Is it not, after all, merely a selfish hope, this yearning after inunortality ? It is a hope common to men of all races and all conditions, but the fact that this is so does not prove that it is to be realized. The desire to avoid final personal annihilation might be put on the same plane as that to escape sorrow, sick- ness, pain. The hope for an everlasting existence may be like the hope for health, wealth, power, fame, not necessary of ful- fillment, and the instinctive argument therefore a baseless one. Unless we accept the miraculous and the supernatural as true, where is the evidence for immortality? story of a Reporter's Synaicate, Three chairs went slamming back from the pedro table in the San Francisco Press Club. This was a frequent expostulatory method in the old roomy quarters on Pine street, before the fire, which burned up Tombstone (the club's cat), as well as the due bills of the club's members. It was the old story of the "high man," the "low man," the "greedy man," and the other two. The high man had six to go; the greedy man had twelve; the low man was off the board with four cinches in a two-bit game, and the other two were trailing the greedy man. By all the ethics of draw pedro the greedy man should have given the low man the drop, but he had the king with two other trumps, and the low man had offered six and drawn four cards; so the greedy man, trusting the ace lay with the bidder, played a waiting game; and the high man caught the low man^s pedro with an ace and went out. That was why three chairs slammed angrily; why the low man said he'd be damned if he'd ever play another game of cards in which the greedy man had a hand ; why two others joined the profane protest, and why the high man mildly and hypocritically censured the greedy man for a false play, trying not to show (though everybody knew it), how glad he was that it had resulted to his profit just thirty steam beers, or several three-f or-two meals, while as 3^et it w^as a day and some hours toj pay-day. Incidentally Comstock, the greedy man, lost the presidency of the Press Club. At the election, two weeks later, he lacked a vote and that vote was cast for his rival by one of the men who was in the game. It is believed in the club to this day that all four voted against Comstock, including Sanchez, the high man. When Eeed, the low man, and the other two, Steele and Cole, had exhausted their words, and the secretly glad Sanchez had 24 RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY. remarked, upon going to a window, that it was still raining in sheets, and that as the last car had left he would camp on Qie lounge for the night, Comstock, with the approaching election in view, did a diplomatic thing. He called the night steward to take the orders for five, and while Mose was mixing as many drinks they all fell to discussing their fellows of the newspaper world. There were city editors, who were beasts in the collective eyes of the five; notably, Bassett of the Monarch, who had come to the post two weeks before by reason of a shake-up, a periodic afflic- tion of that daily. Then there was Morrison, whose besetting sin was parsimony. Morrison kept a big extra staff to meet emergen- cies. Day after day he would walk into the local room, promptly at 1 o'clock, smiling and suave, to say: "Nothing this afternoon, gentlemen. If you will come around to-morrow I hope to have something for you.'' And the men cursed his manner more than his niggardliness. The copy-readers, too, who knifed space, un- derwent a verbal castigation, and that was how the talk reverted to Sparkle and his syndicate. Sanchez, who worked altogether on space, was bemoaning his week's bill, the smallest in months, he swore. The new copy- reader, on the Courant had knifed and chopped and chopped and knifed to make a record. All of his dovetailing of sentences to make his copy hard to cut had gone for nothing. "Start a new graft, Joe," said Steele, who was cynical and fat , as he gulped at a suisesse; "get some news for a change and quit padding." Sanchez was being frozen out on the Courant, as Steele knew. He was a swarthy little Creole, and his eyes flashed like a stiletto, as he started to niake a resentful reply, seeing which Cole broke in to say: "There's an economic freak on all the papers just at present. We might revamp Sparkle's Syndicate. Morrison's on the Courant now, and I think we could work him again with the old dodge if we dressed it up properly." Sanchez irritably consigned Sparkle's Syndicate to the nether STORY OF A Reporter's syndicate. 25 world, and termed its author a skate. This was unjust criticism. Sparkle was not a skate, and his syndicate had lodged and fed for weeks four others and himself; but Sanchez's temper was roiled, and he was comparatively a new man, and had never met De- mosthenes Sparkle (Demos, as he was known to all of us old- timers), so all four began to enlighten him as to the merits of that syndicate, and the status of its inventor, which are parts of the annals of San Francisco newspaperdom. ^'Sparkle wasn't a skate," protested Steele, "just a fair news- paperman like yourself, Joe. He wasn't a star," he added ironical- ly, "but with a fair show he could draw down $30 to $40 a week ; good all around man, do the water-front, police, federal, or any old routine, read copy or telegraph, but couldn't dress up a story like Herrick.'^ This was another drive at the Creole, who winced. Sanchez thought himself a star, though no one else did, and he suspected Herrick of trying to chisel him out of his place. "Sparkle was a fair all-around man, though," repeated Steele in his monotonous staccato. "Came in on the swine train, I've heard," volunteered Corn- stock. : "Then you heard wrong;" said Reed, with just a trace of a sneer; "the swine train doesn't go here, as anybody who hasn't been imported knows." This quieted Comstock, with the approaching election in view. He had come to San Francisco under a contract, which made the local men feel a little resentful toward him. Any man who chose to take his chance coming unannounced and unengaged into the San Francisco newspaper world was sure, if of the right sort, early or late, to receive the hand of fellowship. For the man en- gaged in the East and brought o-ut under salar}- a degree of cool- ness awaited. Few of these imported men had proved of value. They had, for the most part, drawn their salaries for the terms of their contracts, and had then dropped out of sight and mem- ory. Comstock was one who had stayed on and had gradually been adopted into the local circle. 26 RAGTIME PHILOSOPHV. Reed lounged baek in the easy-chair as he l^egan the story. ^1 met Sparkle the day he arrived/' he continued. "It was a raw July afternoon with the fog scurrying overhead when he strolled into the local room of the Monarch, and struck Morrison for a detail. He wore a straw hat, shoes that didn't match, trousers frayed at the edges, and a linen duster. There was a scraggy straw-colored beard of a week's growth on his face, and a general all-around hungry look about him. "In those days the Monarch would try out anyone who came along. Sparkle was the exception. Morrison told him that it was useless for him to come around, that he could give him no work, but that didn't feaze Demos. He showed up every day for a detail, borrowed two-bits whenever he could, haunted the ^cocktail route,' and managed to pick up enough free lunches to keep body and soul together; but his clothes grew shabbier and shabbier, and it seemed a matter of hours only wdien they would refuse longer to hold to his frame. They were in the condition of the one-horse shay, just before it disintegrated. Things went on for a week or so. One Saturday afternoon Morrison walked into the local room and saw Demos sitting there, more ragged and more forlorn than ever, and said to him: ^Mr. Sparkle, I really cannot give you any work, and I must request you to keep away from the office.' "Demos braced the city editor for an explanation. He got a flat-footed one. Morrison told him he was so shabby he couldn't send him out on a detail; that his appearance would disgrace the Monarch. I was on office that day and Sparkle looked very down- hearted as he told me he had just been kicked out of the build- ing and touched me for a half a dollar. He was in no hurry to go, though; hung around for an hour or so and told me in part the story of his coming to San Francisco. Sparkle had beaten his way on the trains without much trouble from Denver to Ogden, but found the Central Pacific beyond his resources. He rode the brakebeam as far as Beowawe, Nevada, where he was kicked off the train by the conductor of the freight, ^sfevada was so STORY OF A reporter's SYNDICATE. 27 infested with tramps at that time that whenever he approached a house the dogs were sicked on him before he could open his mouth, or' offer to work for a meaL Well, he tramped it to Bat- tle Mountain, and, after being half-starved for a week, fell in with a cattle train, and was given his meals and a ride to Oakland, in consideration of caring for the cattle en route. Demos told me that he had seriously thought of drowning himself in the Hum- boldt river, before he got the job with the cattlemen, but the river was shallow, and every time he found a pool deep, enough, something about it deterred him, and he would walk along in search of a better place in which to take the final plunge. "Sparkle reached the Oakland mole without a nickel and the cattlemen would not give him the 15 cents then necessary to pay his fare across the ferry. He had had some trouble with them the last day out, he told me, because he had forgotten to do the work for which he had been hired. How he managed to cross the bay he would not tell, and looked very shame-faced when I asked him — the only time I ever saw him exhibit the failing of modesty. My opinion is that he was ashamed to admit that he was not resourceful enough to get across and had tramped it a hundred miles around the bay by way of San Jose. "'Sparkle left the office for the last time, as I supposed. Mon- day morning the Monarch sprang a full first page sensation un- der the scare-head Tiety in Eags.' It was the tale of a tramp who had visited the leading churches of the city, with the re- ception he had received recorded in cold type. It was related with an air of truth and frankness that was convincing. Surly ushers, frowning preachers, the marble heart in the house of God, all were set down. At one of the swell churches he had been shown the door; at one or two minor places of worship he had been cordially received. There was a three-day sensation. Cler- gymen of churches which had not been visited wrote to say that the poor were always welcome in their congregations. Pastors of churches which had given the visitor a cool reception declared they would have the ushers discharged. There was much apol- 28 RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY. ogy and an amusing haste to shift blame from shoulders to other shoulders. Sparkle had caught on. The story at space rates was worth nearly $40, and the news editor persuaded the boss to make it an even fifty. Wednesday was pay-day on the Monarch, then, as now, and no one in the local room saw him until then. I heard afterwards that he stayed in his room till Wednesday morning to hide his rags; reached the office that day before the cashier, and was the first to draw his pay. At 1 o'clock he saun- tered into the local room, dressed in the best ready-made materials to be had from hat to patent leathers, and Morrison placed him regularly on the staff.^^ A boxing contest between Comstock and Tombstone inter- rupted Eeed's narrative. The cat thoroughly detested Comstock, but in a moment of forgetfulness had incautiously approached within reaching distance, and the candidate for the club presi- dency had quickly wrapped him in a bear skin rug. Tombstone had some strange aversion for this bear skin (an atavistic fear most of the club members held), and resented the attack with his claws, drawing blood; whereat Comstock sought to cuff him, and the cat struck out like a prizefighter, retiring from the en- counter with honors and an arched back. Towards the end of the bout between the cat and Comstock, Steele had prodded Sanchez in the ribs as he lay at full length on the lounge, primarily to stop his snoring, and also to tell him to come to his brother's rescue. (Tombstone was black as Satan and the Creole was so swarthy that they were known to the club as the twins.) "When was it that Sparkle ran his syndicate?'' Cole asked, as Mose again responded to Comstock's diplomatic call, a bit of strategy which the election failed to reward. "That was in '91," replied Steele, who, addressing himself to Sanchez, and pointing his moral by innuendo, proceeded briefly to sketch Sparkle's meteoric career. Prosperity had proved the undoing of Demos on the Monarch, Fakes, inspired of much drink, had exhausted Morrison's patience, till he had told Sparkle STORY OF A reporter's SYNDICATE. 29 to go. Demos had lasted six weeks on the Courant, the recollec- tion of which was still a nightmare to that paper. Sparkle had managed to perpetrate a series of animal stories on the Courant. Seals had come to the rescue of drowning sailors off the Cliff House; cats had routed burglars in the Western Addition; elk and bison had fought in Golden Gate Park, and a rattlesnake loose in a Valencia street car had stampeded passengers, grip- man and conductor. From the Courant Sparkle had gone to the Keveille. His first detail had been to report the banquet to Pres- ident Harrison at the Palace Hotel, and he had forgotten to re- turn to the office. That had ended his usefulness on the Reveille, and the day he applied to the Alta, that journal, which had been on the ragged edge for months, suspended. "Sparkle saw the seamy side of life for some weeks. Past cred- it at various bars gave him free lunch privileges for a time. He haunted the Receiving Hospital where the medical students ex- periment on the unfortunate and divided their sandwiches with them. He kicked out the partition between the Courant and Monarch desks in the reporter's room at the Old City Hall, and camped there of nights. When October came news livened up, politics hummed, the miners' convention was in session, there were tw^o or three other State affairs in progress, and reporters were in demand. Sparkle picked up four men out of work and one by one sent them, properly coached, to Momson, who put them to work on the Monarch.'' •'It was a good scheme," said Reed. "The men were hobos, they weren't even skates, but MoiTison fell into the trap. One was a Norwegian sailor, one a letter carrier, the third a waiter from a cheap restaurant, and the fourth a Geary street conductor, who had been discharged for using a 'brother-in-law.' " "What's a brother-in-law ?" innocently asked Comstock. "Well, I'll be hanged ; did you ever hear such ignorance ?" said Steele. "A brother-in-law is a thing to help a conductor knock down. It's a false bell he rings so as not to register fares." "When the scheme was in working order," continued Reed, 30 RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY. "Sparkle gave a reception to twoi or three of us in his room. He had a little back room in a Kearny-street lodging house. It was a cold night. The syndicate had not been in working order long enough to supply Demos with funds. '^We're poor, but we're hospitable/ he said. ^If you boys'll excuse me a couple of minutes I know a coal dealer who has a little shop back of the Palace Hotel who'll sell a fellow 10 cents worth of coal.' This was about 3 o'clock in the moTuing. In five minutes Sparkle came back looking like a Supervisor. He unbuttoned his coat and out dropped eight or ten chunks of coal, which were soon blazing their liveliest in the little grate. You know he roomed about two blo'cks from the Courant office. I've heard since that coal disap- peared with astonishing rapidity in the Courant local room that season. "All four of Sparkle's proteges were kept busily at work. Half the rievvspaper men in town knew of the scheme, but 'Oemos was a good fellow and no one gave the snap away, so Morrison didn't catch on. The men got two details a day ; that was $3 apiece and a Sunday story and a little space was run in, so together they drew down about $90 a week. Demos took half for his share. "The four used to come down regularly to the police reporters' rooms.' One of the hobos could write a fair hand and Sparkle dictated to him. The others told what they had been detailed to do, and Demos wrote up their copy. Then all four would start for the Monarch, going into the office about five minutes apart to turn in their stuff. "Things went along swimmingly for a month, and then Demos had to go on a booze. His proteges could not find him to get their stuff fixed and so they braced the city editor themselves. The waiter handed in his copy with little i's and badly misspelled, and Morrison told him he was drunk and discharged him. The sailor had been sent out on labor, and reported that he could not find Macdonald. This aroused Morrison's suspicions, for Macdonald did the labor detail on the Reveille, and it was to him Sparkle had been in the habit of sending the sailor for tips. On top of STORY OF A REPORTER S SYNDICATE. 31 this the letter carrier and the conductor reported that they had fallen down on their assignments. Morrison, who could not tell a drunken man unless his breath, was strong enough to knock one down, suspected booze, but a new copy reader, who was on that night, told him the hobos were sober, so he began an inquisition which led to a confession by the sailor of the whole job. The four hobos were discharged, including the waiter. Morrison was so mad that he discharged himi over again. "By force of habit Sparkle came reeling into the police report- ers' room dow^n at the old City Hall about 2\ o'clock that morning and stretched out on the desk. He was too far gone to understand, so we posted up notices all around him, sacred to the memory of the syndicate and locked him' in for the night. "Two days after that Sparkle disappeared. "Poor old Demos I I haven't seen him since. He dropped completely out of sight. I suppose he's come to some tragic end before this," moralized Steele. "Guess again," said Comstock. "It's comedy instead of trag- edy; he's married." All of our faces expressed interrogation marks, and Comstock added: "Yes, he's married to the daughter of a Los Angeles banker. I was introduced to him in San Ber- nardino last month (you know I took a two weeks' vacation in Southern California.) Sparkle is quite a power the other side of Tehachapi ; he's running a Prohibition paper for the pne-lungers in Pasadena." "The hell you say !" said Steele. Then five voices in chorus shouted "Mose !" The steward came from the bar to take the orders. In an adjoining room the Press Club quartet was practicing "Eocked in the Cradle of the Deep." Outside the rain beat a threnody on the window panes. Cak$ from Catnpa. Cbe Scoop Cbat Tailcl On the bulletin board of the Tampa Bay Hotel there appeared one noon quite a full account of the expedition of the Gussie to the coast of Cuba, the landing of men from the First Infantry, the encounter with a Spanish patrol, the wounding of one of the American invaders, and the capture of one of the enemy, the re- treat to the steamer and its return to an American port. This account was signed by a correspondent ofl a Western papei with the accompanying statement that the journal which he rep- resented had issued an extra giving in detail the foregoing facts. The bulletin board had been used by the newspapermen to an- nounce the most important war news which their respective papers had to give and by the army to post orders of general interest. New York newspapermen strolled back from luncheon too in- different to notice the bulletin board. Chicago newspapermen, more curious, glanced at the board and laughed. The idea that Chicago could be scooped was preposterous. So they laughed and made comments and Jeered about news coming from California by slow freight, while the New York contingent maintained its in- difference until it was suggested that General Shafter be seen re- garding the story. General Shafter confirmed it. The facts were true. It was the first time that an American force had landed in Cuba. The men were from his old command, the First Infantry, stationed for years at San Francisco. They had been given the honor of mak- ing the first reconnoiter. The first American blood had been shed on Cuban soil. Then the New York men and the Chicago men berated Shafter and made the wires hot with specials to the TALES FROM TAMPA. 33 LOITERING ON THE PIER AT PORT TAMPA. papers published in those cities^ which speedily had extras on the streets announcing the facts. It was 4 o'clock in the afternoon when the correspondent who had scooped the w^orld received a telegram from his paper. Just what form the congratulations would assume he was curious to know, so he hastily tore open the envelope and read a rebuke from his managing editor for wasting day tolls on an unimportant mes- sage. He was informed that the paper which he represented was not issuing extras over trivial events; that it had not issued an extra on the news sent, and to confine his telegrams to mes- sages sent at night rates hereafter unless he really had some im- portant news. And the New York men and the Chicago men and the corrs- spondents from Toronto and Des Moines, from Minneapolis and St. Louis frankly complimented him, and the San Francisco man kept his own counsel and his managing editor's telegram. si RAGTIME PHILOSOPHY, 0'$b4Udbnc$$y and tbe Queen. Primaril}^ he was James O'Shaiighnessy, Jr., incidentanv war correspondent at Tampa oi the Chicago Chronicle, and he looked his name. ( With his name and personality went that hatred of the English and things English wdiich he thought was rightfully his as a blood inheritance. Now, whether it was so or whether this hatred was the outgrowth of much study and agitation doesn't really matter. I incline to the latter belief as one who thinks that the doctrine of heredity is being overworked just now, but O'Shaughnessy insists that I am wrong and that he is the best judge ^f his own mental processes. Among the hundred or more war correspondents at Tampa were representatives of English and Canadian papers, men from the London Times, the London Chronicle', the London Mail, the Lon- don Telegraph, the Manchester Guardian and other journals of note. There were British attaches, naval and military, as well as those of other nationalities, ready to accompany the army of inva- sion. There is a good-sized English colony in Florida, and the principal paper of the State, the Jacksonville Times-Union and Citizen, was Anglican in its editorial sympathies. This was at a time when the press of continental Europe, with two exceptions, one a journal of Rome and the other published at Budapest, was reeking with vituperation of America and prophe- sying the success of the Spanish arms. It was also a time when the English press got on the right side so far as feeling and proph- ecy went, when the sentiment that l)lood was thicker thp.ri water was given open expression, when the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes were crossed and when the talk of a t'in.