S

PEAKING of fogs," said Uncle Biddle, "I recollect one in '73, coming home on the steamer Henry Martin, that run along for six days till we got collided and stove in by a four-masted schooner. She slid off and left us in the fog. Mighty! that was quite a fog. The Henry Martin sunk and we went adrift in four boats."

The aged mariners, who squatted against the warehouse on Jamaica Dock, stirred and growled as half water-logged memories turned over in the brine. The bay was hidden and the fog noisy with hoarse groaning horns.

"The Henry Martin?" said one. "Wa'n't that L. C. Cheke's?"

"There!" said Uncle Biddle. "Cheke's it was! I was fishing for that name."

"I sailed with him once," said the aged one. wa'n't agreeable. Thickset man with a fan beard. come o' them boats?"

"He What

"Well, as I recollect it," said Uncle Biddle, "three of them boats was picked up by the schooner. But the one I was in didn't do nothing of the kind on account of a man named Kibbe Low that knew about turtles.

"Speaking of turtles," Uncle Biddle went on after a pause, "I had a turtle once that used to eat coffee beans and red peppers, but some dumbasted corrupter of youth tried him on plug tobacco, and he died on account of getting ambitious and dissipated. Mighty gifted turtle he was for his age. He'd bite off a red pepper, and go into his shell to think about what in nature those sensations might mean, and then he'd come out sort of I don't make it out. Les' try that again.' speckled back and used to-"

Had a

"What about Kibbe Low?" some one interrupted. "Kibbe Low?"

"What became of the boat you were in?"

"AYE! YE! You mean when the Henry Martin was wrecked! Happened this way, when we got ready to put off, because it was Captain Cheke's boat, only Kibbe Low wasn't there, and Captain Cheke got to talking profaneness about fogs and folks, particular Kibbe Low, because the Henry Martin was making up her mind to go down. But he sent a man up to look for Kibbe Low, and swore some more. Then I went up too, and met them coming back dragging a leatherback turtle along deck, turned over, with a rope to her tail and flippers waving wild. We slid her overboard, because Kibbe Low says: 'Grandma's full of eggs,' he says. 'Slide her over.' She weighed eight hundred or more, and the skin of her shell was all ridged and wrinkled. So we slid her over, and jumped for the boat, because the captain's remarks was running high, and they acted like there was going to be a heavy gale of language, barometer falling, and wind rising, and blowing spray off the white caps, and such.

"Speaking of Kibbe Low, the first time I see him was on the beach at Bahia, because I was looking for him. He was a circus hunter like me. At that time we collected animals for shows, and I was looking for him in Bahia, because I heard he knew turtles, and he was sitting melancholy on the lone sea sand. He says: 'I'll never catch another snake,' he says, 'nor any of them that claws or wriggles. Nevermore,' he says, 'nevermore.' "Why not?' I says.

"Because I always dream of the beasties I got in charge,' he says, 'and when a man's visioning he ought to select his company. If they gets on my mind, they gets on my chest. I've got an anaconda, and two jaguars, and some fer-de-lances, and some vampire bats, and the things that bunch does to me nights is a shame.' "I'll trade you charges,' I says.

"Slow beasties that live on grass would be my idea. Gazelles now,' he says, thoughtful, 'or maybe anteaters.' "Maybe turtles,' I says.

"Maybe turtles, or them shiny little green humming birds would do pretty nice.'

""Well,' I says, 'I've got a consignment of leathery turtles that look sick to me. I do' know how I'm going to get 'em home right, because I don't know turtles. Do you know turtles?'

"I know turtles,' he says, 'better than any man in Brazil.'

"Well, I guess he did. We bunched shipments and came north on the Henry Martin. He handled my turtles all right, but some of his bats went sick on me. He was a large bony man, sort of gaunt and pallid, and walked kind of sideways, and his system was full of alcohol and reflection. He didn't mind turtles on account of their being built solid and calm and not having squirmy habits. Then the Henry Martin was run into after six days of fog, and Captain Cheke swore scandalous in the boat. He did sure, but after we cast off he got silenter and silenter. By and by he says:

"What the dumbasted nation ails this boat? She don't steer,' he says. "Weigh them oars!'

"So the men quit rowing, but the boat kept traveling on like it hadn't noticed, and Kibbe Low sat forward

while he heaved a sigh, and by and by he got back some profaneness.

"Do you mean to tell me,' he says, 'that dumbasted old turtle is towing us back to South America?' he says, and he looked at his hand compass. 'Ho!' he says. 'Hm! That ain't a bad bearing, dumbaste her!' And he stood up and yelled to the other boats, but got no answer. You couldn't see anything but the fog, and the sea, which was quiet enough, laying rather still and scummy.

"Kibbe Low straddled around the other way, and allowed he'd tell us about turtles.

""The marine chelonia, called the leathery turtle or luth,' he says, and by scientists called the sphargis coriacea.' "Dumbaste the scientists!' says Captain Cheke. 'If you mean grandma, say grandma!'

"I think the same as Captain Cheke,' I says. 'Ain't she been a well-behaved turtle all this voyage? Ain't she treating us white? Suppose she is a hard-shelled immersionist, ain't she a right to her sex? What for do you mean by sitting up there, looking like a second-hand octopus and calling grandma names? Ain't she doing her best? Ain't the captain said her bearings is good? Well, then?'

"Then some of the crew came in and made remarks to the effect if Kibbe Low didn't mind he'd get slapped on both sides.

"Ignorance and ingratitude,' says Kibbe Low, speaking thoughtful. 'When I put 'em together, I observes there's enough in this boat to make a clam chowder to poison Baal. Who's miscalling grandma? It ain't me. All I says is she's full of eggs; I says she's been getting restless for a week; I says when a leathery turtle is full of eggs she wants to go ashore, because she always lays eggs in the sand, because God Almighty told her to, and it don't make any difference where in the seven seas she is, she'll make a beeline for the nearest sand beach. That's her Ten Commandments and she's all right. Who's miscalling grandma? It ain't me. Anybody heard me dumbaste her? No, they ain't. How come this luxury, instead of the human back busted? On account knowledge and virtue, which is me and grandma. What's all this that I see aft of me? Ignorance and ingratitude,' says Kibbe Low.

straddling the bow. The captain turned and looked at the wake, and he see the last of the Henry Martin, funnels aslant, bow under and stern heaved up, dark and gray in the fog. Then she went down head on. He took off his cap and wiped his forehead with a red handkerchief.

"You'd better elect another skipper, boys,' he says, that meek of a sudden it would make you weep. 'My brain is gone soppy,' he says plaintive. 'I never did like fogs.'

"What's the matter?' says Kibbe Low, looking round. "Why, speaking as a brother man,' says Captain Cheke sarcastic, 'has this boat got spirits, or hasn't she? Does dories walk off like this, or maybe I've alIways been misdeceived about dories?'

"Why, no,' says Kibbe Low. 'It ain't that exactly. It's grandma. Speaking as a brother man, I've got a towline on her.'

"Then Captain Cheke put his cap on, and after a

"It ain't your knowledge, it's the vainglory of it,' I says, seeing he had the heft of the argument with him. "I hitched this boat to the maternal instinct,' says Kibbe Low. 'We're guided and hauled by the maternal instinct.'

"IT

T GOT dark and Captain Cheke lit a lantern, and we ate supper very comfortable. I went to sleep. Likely the rest did except for one watch. You couldn't see grandma, for she swum all under and there was sixty foot of towline on her, but she never let up that I heard of. But at last I heard Kibbe Low and another man forward arguing, and by and by the other man says: 'It's Biddle's watch.'

"So I got up in the bow. It was four o'clock in the

morning and the night was black, and we swishing along steady. I sat down and near went to sleep again. After a long time, sort of nodding and thinking, of a sudden I noticed there was a smother of foam all round, and things was getting lighter with the daybreak.

tom.

"Ahoy!' I says. 'Breakers! Then we hit sand botThe breakers didn't amount to 'much, but they came over aft where Captain Cheke was lying, and he got wet and come up profane. We couldn't see shore nor see grandma, but I could feel her on the towline, and we all piled out in shallow water and hoisted on the boat. By and by we came through the ripples to a great sandy beach. The tide was up, but you couldn't see anything but sand and fog and ripples, and grandma digging a hole to lay eggs in. It might have been six o'clock. There was some driftwood, and I started making coffee and drying off, and Kibbe Low sat down by grandma to see if she was going to plant eggs the way the books said she ought to. Captain Cheke and his men went up the beach.

"THE

HE curious thing about that was, they never came back. They walked into the fog, and there they weren't. I never see Captain Cheke from that moment to this, nor cared to particular. He hadn't a stitch of manners on him, and his temper wa'n't good in a fog, ror after he'd lost a ship, nor any other time. Kibbe Low and me and grandma didn't know if they'd all been ate up by cannibals in the hinterland. They was wiped up and vanished like a man I knew name William Henry Harris, that used to disappear by walking out of his back door. But William Henry, he could disappear more ways than that. They did say he could fade into the ground under his hat, or if you kicked him hard he'd go off like a soap bubble, but I guess that was mythology, because he got almost as interesting as a religion in that town, but I heard two men swear they'd seen him vanish through a picket fence and take off three pickets doing it, sort of light-minded, as if he hadn't much hold on reality, only when a vanisher can take off three pickets, seems to me-well, I do' know. But I was sitting on a cracker barrel, and I see William Henry Harris-"

"Uncle Biddle," some one interrupted, "I wish you would postpone William Henry."

"Hey?"

"I wish you'd ask him to call again, when Kibbe Low and grandma aren't talking."

"I wish you boys wouldn't bust in and put me out," said Uncle Biddle. "They wa'n't talking at all. Grandma was digging another hole, because I got a pail full of eggs out of the first one. I put her hopes of posterity on to boil, and Kibbe Low he didn't say nothing, except he said he was thinking about the maternal instinct. He sat looking toward the sea that was all fog and ripples, and grandma set there laying eggs, and I was watching the boil, and somebody yelled.

"It wa'n't any of us that yelled. We whopped around and I see grandma was annoyed. She had her head stuck up as you might say: 'I wish folks would stay off me when I'm busy.'

"There was a woman with a blanket on her scuttling away into the fog. I guess maybe she'd walked into grandma, or maybe she'd seen us unexpected. Anyhow she scuttled off with hair flying, and blanket flopping, and not much on but that there striped blanket as far as man might argue or infer. Kibbe Low says: "I guess that settles it.'

"Settles what?' I says.

"I was thinking where we might be.'

"You wa'n't either!' I says. 'You was thinking about the maternal instinct.'

"Not just lately,' he says. 'Anyhow the Injuns up north of Macapa make a blanket with black stripes, because I've seen 'em in Macapa. I'll bet we've landed near French Guiana.'

"Guiana nothing!' I says. "We're fourteen days now from Bahia.'

"You think it over,' he says. There was three days' storm, then three days' calm when we must have made distance. Then we struck head winds, and then we struck fog. Maybe you know whether Captain Cheke was making time or asking questions of the fog, but I never asked any, except I heard him say he was going to Trinidad, or else he said he wasn't, and I'll be dumbasted if I remember which, or when.'

"COME

OME to think of it, I hadn't either; maybe on account of Kibbe Low's bats getting sick on me and hanging themselves up dead, or maybe on account of Captain Cheke's temper in the fog. I never asked him. The more I thought of it the more I didn't seem to know, but we might have butted into Portugal or Potomac or Porto Rico or Pemaquid or Portsmouth, or if Captain Cheke had been fishing for Trinidad in the fog, maybe grandma had smelled Guiana for the nearest beach. The more I thought of it the more my head seemed to get full of fog, and the more I couldn't remember anything except worrying about what the Lation ailed them vampire bats. I wished Captain Cheke would come back and make some peaceable statements on latitude and longitude.

"Anyhow,' says Kibbe Low, 'that Injun woman's blanket looked sort of thin-striped to me, like one of those things I see in Macapa.'

"Injun,' I says. 'Well, some of her looked to me

"I run down and tried to heave her over-"

sort of whitish. I do' know. But I ain't going to wait breakfast for Captain Cheke,' I says. 'You can,. or you can wait breakfast for the lady in stripes, or you can meditate on maternals,' I says. "Turtle eggs suits me.' "He says: 'I was thinking the Injuns up by French Guiana are some wild.'

"That's the third thing you've thought,' I says. 'You're overworking your mind.'

"Maybe they won't come back to breakfast,' he says. 'Maybe they are breakfast.'

""What's the use of splitting hairs?' I says. "That's a fine distinction you've got there. Anybody that eats Captain Cheke,' I says, 'won't need to get pepper on him.' "You ain't a humane man, Biddle,' he says, melancholy. 'How can I eat turtle eggs and see visions of Captain Cheke in a pot?'

"Do him good,' I says, eating eggs. 'If he was cooked, chewed, digested, and had some experience as nourishment, it might do him good. I'm humane,' I says, 'but what Captain Cheke needs is discipline. If he was distributed through a whole tribe, he'd flavor 'em up like an onion. Consequently, if it was put to me, I'd vote to cook him and distribute him, because he ought never to have been brought together anyhow.' "He-he!' says some one close by. 'Ha-ha!'

"WE

E LOOKED round again, and there behind, about a rod away, sat the woman with the striped blanket, laughing like she'd held in some time and wa'n't going to any more. 'He-he!' she says. 'May I have some turtle eggs and coffee? Please!' "Sure you can,' I says, and she come and sat by the fire all wrapped up, with the blanket tucked in under the feet, and only one arm loose.

"Sugar, ma'am?' I says. 'You're no Injun!' "Of course not,' she says. 'I'm a captive, like Captain Cheke.'

"There!' says Kibbe Low, and he come over sudden, and reached for the coffeepot. 'I thought so. Even Biddle said they looked kind of whitish.'

"I didn't either,' says Kibbe Low. 'I said: "Some Injuns up north of Macapa make striped blankets."" "But I did set up a word about "them"! I says.

"I didn't either,' says Kibbe Low. 'Moreover, begging your pardon, ma'am,' he says, 'that man Biddle is a hard-hearted man. He said he didn't give a dum

basting if Captain Cheke was eat and distributed.' "I didn't either!' I says. I just said if he was distributed it might soften him maybe, but I ain't a dumbaster, ma'am, and never use the word, nor repeat it to a lady, like some folks that's shameless.'

"Oh, never mind!' she says. 'I don't think Captain Cheke will be eaten. Perhaps it's done sometimes, but 1 never saw it. How did you come here?'

"She said her name was Norah Baylis and she was born part French, and came lately to Guiana, and didn't know anything much about that country, having been captured by Injuns while picking flowers. She said it was a nice tribe, only it didn't wear any clothes to mention, and, besides eating coconuts and things, it did cook awful messes, and when it captured a person it wouldn't let her go back. If you were captured once you were planted for good. 'Besides, how can I go back,' she says, 'when I don't know the way?' She was pretty vague about French Guiana. She thought the city that one came to after the voyage was off there somewhere.

"Cayenne maybe!' I says.

66

'That's the name,' she says. 'Cayenne's the name of it.' But the tribe was a nice tribe, and she thought if she stayed long enough she could get them all to wash their heads, and she'd like to know what kind of turtle it was, and how we got there. Sort of a chubby face she had, and curly hair and twinkly eyes, and she did beam over with cheerfulness and composure to surprise you.

"THE

HEN we told her about the Henry Martin and the business of collecting beasts, including grandma, only Kibbe Low kept busting in foolish and making insinuations, and it seemed to me only right to correct his misstatements and not deceive Norah Baylis about his character.

"A man that'll dream of bats and anacondas ain't a man to tie up to,' I says.

"Sometimes, when I reflect on Biddle's natural hardheartedness, ma'am,' he says, 'it's an awful grief to me.' "Grief!' I says. You ain't got any more grief than grandma! Hi!' I says. 'Grandma's going to sea!' because she'd come out of her hole like she'd had all the maternity she needed, and she was making down the beach. The tide was ebbing and she had some way to go, so I run down, and tried to heave her over, and called for Kibbe Low, and she kept waddling on and wouldn't heave, and Kibbe Low sat planted as solid as grandma, and he says: 'Not me.' She near took me into wet before I let her go. I went back, and we watched grandma till she slid under. The fog was getting thinner. (Continued on page 34)

The Actress

(Concluded from page 24,

Here I put my foot down. I told him the thing he had engaged was not a personality but an By giving the public what it liked, or what he thought it liked, we might prosper for a time; but I meant to do more than that, and last longer.

had been led to think me.

actress.

I had expected to be justified by the critics-that they at least would recognize what I saw trying for. But an unfortunate thing happened. The rest of the company found that the attempt to produce the effect of Hungarian character hampered them, and gave it up. They played in their usual manner. By contrast the manner and the "business" I had developed stood out rather sharply. I was condemned for sinking into low comedy. I make no quarrel with that. It was rather disappointing, however, to have the critics tell me I was an ingénue, and that it was a mistake to try to be anything else. If it was a mistake I had to stand by it, for the public responded to what I was doing so strongly that we could not change it.

ONE thing made me furious. In one of

the scenes I had to appear as a young girl in knee skirts. In knee skirts I do not look like the typical young girl of the knee-skirt age. I suppose I have a full measure of what is called the vanity of understanding. and this was my first chance of the kind on Broadway. Now it nay as well be known that theatrical stockings are usually woven very thin at the ankles and thicker above. I had a pair of stockings woven thick at the ankle and thinner above. The result was a pair of twelve-year-old pipestems. They made the situation more plausible and thus added to the amusement of the scene.

But one of the critics remarked that I had no reason to be ashamed of the exposure because I had nothing to be ashamed of. Now I ask you honestly, is that criticism?

But once more I got the chance to show them--show the critics, I mean. The next character that fell to me was the one I am playing now in "The Bird of Paradise"-a native Hawaiian girl, primitive and half-savage, full of childlike coquetry and dumb, animal pathos. Now I have never been in Hawaii. But I had an idea; and the author, who knew, said it was the right one. I had noticed the way negroes carry themselves-a supple, half slouching carriage, at once languid and vigorous, as if they were feeling a slow pleasure in the movement of every muscle. My idea was to build on this sort of thing, make it gentle and appealing. Later in the play, in trying to become civilized, the girl puts on shoes and corsets. I tried to show that she was hampered, made awkward, by them. That is the whole idea not only of the part but the play. There are real Hawaiians in the production, and on the first night a lady in the audience who had been brought up on a South Sea island sent back to ask if: I was not also a native kanaka. The critics had no such doubts. One of them, I while speaking very pleasantly of my performance as a whole, commented on my bearing and implied that I had never learned to walk across the stage.

WHAT discouraged me most was the

fact that they all seemed to have forgotten my other performances. I had appeared as an American ingénue, a Hungarian soubrette, and a sort of Madame Butterfly tragic heroine, and each time with success. But instead of discussing whether or not I was really versatile and an artist, they mistook my attempts at characterization for faults of personality. When Duse, playing an Italian peasant, walked through a tragic scene on her heels, the critics were loud in the praise of her fidelity to life and the character. But in an American a similar attempt was taken as a sign of incompetence.

When Bernhardt played here last I saw her in almost every performance, and I hope it will not be taken as an evidence of vanity if again I cite the example of a world-famous actress. She was an old woman, with only enough of her beauty left to be in some strange way painful. But she was still a great artist, and the public flocked to see her. We all hope to live long, and it seems clear to me that the only way to be successful and happy is always to try honestly to do the very best. Few of us can ever reach the

heights; but the great chances make life interesting, and at the worst those of us who take them in the humble ways that are opening before us will not starve in the effort to maintain a false dignity as

star.

Abbott Detroit

The Abbott-Detroit "30" is an established success and has been for three years.

It has sold so rapidly that we have scarcely advertised it this season.

Now, however, before we put through our last production order for 1912 "Thirties" we wish to recall to the public mind once more, some of its essential points of merit and superiority.

Differing in no material way from the famous Abbott-Detroit "Bull-Dog" which has covered over 50,000 miles of its 100,000-mile endurance test, it has a big 30 H. P. motor, 4%-inch bore by 44-inch-stroke; 110-inch wheel base; 34x31⁄2-inch tires with demountable rims; Dual ignition with magneto; 'forced lubrication; cellular radiator; multiple disc clutch; three speed forward and reverse transmission with Chrome nickel gears; full floating type rear axle, nickel steel construction with Timken roller bearings; all high duty forgings, double heat treated; latest type of inside control ventilated fore-door body; Bullet electric head lights; combination oil and electric side and tail lamps; 100 ampere hour lighting battery; complete set

of tools.