Various

“ You must know we Waganda are fond of three things—to have a nice wife, a pleasant farm, and to hear good news, or a lively story. I have heard a great many stories in my life, but, unlike Kadu, my mind remembers them not. Men’s heads are not the same, any more than men’s hearts are like. But I take it that a poor tale is better than none. It comes back to me like a dream, this tale of the Elephant and the Lion. ”

“ Anne I selected a site for my cage and erected it at once. It is located in the heart of the jungle, a trifle more than a mile from any human habitation, and I named it Fort Gorilla. It is in a spot where nothing but the denizens of the bush has any cause to come. It is near a grove of plantains, on which the gorilla feasts with the gusto of a charter member of the Gourmand Club. He does not care so much for the fruit, but takes out the tender heart of the young stalk, which is quite succulent, and eats it with an appetite peculiar to his race. ”

“ I have, as yet, seen but few chimpanzees since I have taken up my abode at Fort Gorilla, but I hope to enjoy some private interviews with them before I decamp.
It is difficult for me to tell you what it is to be alone in the bosom of the N’Ka̤mi forest. No fancy can portray the solitude of such a time and place. Just now the elements are in an angry mood; the thunder rolls along the sky, until the earth recoils and trembles at the sound; the wind shrieks through the jungle as if to find a refuge from impending wrath; the pouring rain pursues it with the speed of fear ”

“ Rose’s over-strained nerves were her best allies, and as she flew down the stairs it was the easiest thing in the world for her to give one piercing shriek after another. They resounded from the narrow stairway through the kitchen, and for the moment seemed to paralyze its inmates. As she burst in upon them, Florence was transfixed midway of the table and the stove with the platter of ham in her hands, the baby had climbed upon a chair, and the tramp had arisen with a bewildered air from the table. ”

“ At this time a woman approached, and seeing four lions and one elephant and her husband dead, she raised up her hands wonderingly, and cried, ‘How did all this happen?’ The elephant, hearing her voice, came from behind a tree, with a spear quivering in his side, and bleeding profusely. At the sight of him the woman turned round to fly, but the elephant cried out to her, ‘Nay, run not, woman, for I can do you no harm. The happy days in the woods are ended for all the tribes. The memory of this scene will never be forgotten. Animals will be at constant war one with another. ”

“ Wait a little, I am coming to you.’ He advanced towards the shore, but, when he was close enough, the lion sire sprang into the air, and alighted on the elephant’s back, and furiously tore at the muscles of the neck, and bit deep into the shoulder. The elephant retreated into the deepest part of the pool again, and submerged himself and his enemy, until the lion was compelled to abandon his back and begin to swim ashore. No sooner had he felt himself relieved than the elephant rose to the surface, and hastily followed and seized the lion with his trunk. ”

“ After all, every home exhibits a clinging pananthropoism, if one may be permitted to coin the word. Books and pictures and statuary are the man, just as much as his style. They are his most subtile expression. They are his unlying interpreters. As you walk into Doctor Hale’s parlor, resting upon the floor, there confronts you a realistic colored photograph of the compelling Matterhorn. That picture, with its glacier, its precipices, and its summit, conquered only by coöperative achievement, is a fit emblem of a family climbing from height to height. ”

“ THE LIFE AND EXPERIENCES OF AN ENGINEER OF A LIMITED EXPRESS.
By Cleveland Moffett.
“See the huge creature with muscles of steel, his heart a furnace of glowing coal, and the strength of a thousand horses nerving his sinews. See him strut forth from his stable, and, saluting the train of cars with a dozen sonorous puffs from his iron nostrils, stand panting to be gone. He would drag the pyramids across the Desert of Sahara if they could be hitched on.”
The average New Yorker who rides to Chicago in twenty hours on the World’s Fair flyer does an easy day’s work, in fact, does no work at all. ”

“ We were stepping out briskly, for we knew we were close to home, when a big mountain hawk swooped right in front of us. Jones, who had not drawn the cartridge from his rifle, let fly on the instant, without remembering how small was his chance with a bullet at quarry on the wing. We were amusing ourselves chaffing Jones as the bird flew off untouched when Colonel Eyre, who was a few steps to the rear, pulled up short and raised his hand to signal for silence. ”

“ Strange thoughts chased through my mind; the houses of flying towns seemed to be rushing at each other in battle from either side, a long line of loose ties between the tracks suggested an endless procession of turtles, the trees seemed to be dancing down the hills, and the people who stared up at us while stepping away from the dangerous suction seemed to be creatures of another race. ”

“ The fireman’s orders are to make up the lost time, and he proposes to do it. In goes coal at the rate of two shovelfuls a minute for the first half-hour. Before we reach Albany he has shovelled in more than three tons, and had the day been windy it would have taken more. In the intervals he rakes and prods the white-hot crater and rings the bell as we shoot past towns and cities. Buchanan tends to the whistle and air-brakes. The noise is dreadful, as if a thousand devils were dancing in one’s head. The motion is so violent from side to side that we all have to hold on tightly. ”

“ Is it possible for the man who drives one of our great modern trains to have any other religion than that? Fifteen days in the month, twelve months in the year, he runs his engine three hundred miles; and besides that, does extra work when a sick comrade must be replaced, or the occasion demands. The remaining days of the year he is resting for the strain and responsibility of the morrow. He worships in the same place that he does his duty, under the broad arch of heaven; his creed is to keep the train on time, his prayer that danger may be averted. ”

“ As one goes from room to room, and talks with one and another of the busy, courteous savants, he realizes finally that it is here that Pasteur the scientist is to be found. The labors that made the great savant famous are all summed up here. Here his methods are at work, here is his spirit alive in the men who have best comprehended him, and whom he has been able most deeply to inspire. It is a great thing to achieve. It is a greater thing to inspire others to achieve. Louis Pasteur has done both. ”

“ Science may remove the mechanical difficulties in the way of running a hundred miles an hour, or more, for such a rate has already been predicted; money may buy better axles, wheels, lubricators, 358 and machinery, but where are the men who will run these trains of the future when they are built? Can science breed us a race of giants? Can money purchase an immunity against suffering or eyes that are indestructible? If twenty-eight engineers are required to-day on the Chicago flyer, how many, pray, will be necessary on a train running fifty or one hundred per cent. ”

“ I rolled out from under the hungry jaws, and just as I reached the ground I heard the angry growl of the baffled monster, followed by a shattering roar loud enough to waken the Seven Sleepers. As my senses came back to me, I found myself lying half on the ground, half on my low camp bed, my body bathed in perspiration, and trembling in every limb. Just then my batman put his head inside the tent-flap and asked me if I had heard the roar, adding that there was a tiger in the camp. ”

“ Burns used to look in daily on the incessant preparations, his countenance beaming with joy, but Alice would not permit him to destroy the pleasures of imagination by approaching near to her. She would lift her finger coyly, and warn him off, if he presumed on any familiarities, but she allowed him to sit on the other side of the fire from that graced by herself.
At length the wedding-day arrived. Such signs of feasting had never before been seen in Ballynaskeagh. New loaves had been procured from Newry, fresh beef from Rathfriland, whiskey from Banbridge. ”

“ The bricks have not yet lost their glare. One can almost see the dust still on the stone. The bronze has not lost its fresh lustre. Even the lawn has the unevenness of new sod, the horse-chestnut trees are small, the ivy has not had time to climb far up the walls. ”

“ Every instinct of the gorilla seems to be averse to all human society; he delights in a life of seclusion in the most remote and desolate parts of the jungle, and I have never heard of but one gorilla that became even tolerant to man, much less attached to him, and this one was a mere infant. I have seen a few in captivity, but all of them are vicious, and devoid of any sense of gratitude whatever. On the other hand, the chimpanzee delights in the society of man, and displays many good traits. ”

“ Out of the shadows, which shift with the sun, forms seem crawling and phantoms appear to glide, and we are 355 in a fever almost from the horrible illusions of fancy. We breathe quickly and fear to speak, for the smallest vibration in the silence would jar on our nerves. ”

“ The doctrine of microbe, the theory that ferments and virus are living beings, that a vaccine is an attenuated virus, that medicine is based on the artificial attenuation of virus—all this is now so widely received, is so thoroughly a part of popular belief, that one is bewildered in remembering that twelve years ago the general theory of disease was that it is “in us, from us, by us.” Especially is all this astonishing, standing in the Pasteur Institute, the crystallization of the microbe doctrine.
“Yes,” continued Doctor Roux, “we have conquered hydrophobia; nothing is more certain.” ”

“ The thrilling stories about gorillas stealing women and holding them as captives in the bush, and of their taking children and holding them for ransom, are mere freaks of fancy, and I can find no native of the land in which the gorilla is found who believes that such a thing ever occurred, but all assert that man, woman, and child fare alike in the hands of this cruel beast. ”

“ That pamphlet alcove, narrow, musty, yet busy, a composite of the stage-coach days and our electric era, gave me a graver suspicion of Doctor Hale’s cosmopolitan interests than any word he had uttered or anything I had hitherto seen in the temple.
When I came back Doctor Hale was again stretched upon the lounge. He began almost fiercely upon his favorite topic, and I can do no better than to give his own words:
“I have written twenty-five books, but I’m not an author; I’m a parish minister. I don’t care a snap for the difference between Balzac and Daudet. That isn’t important in life. ”

“ This exceeds the average of the Chicago flyer, which is 48.2 miles an hour, although for a much greater distance. Several times our speed had reached seventy miles an hour, and with better coal and other conditions equally favorable, Buchanan has driven 870 up to the eighty-mile point. With the sound devils still dancing in my head, I watched the engineer as he rubbed down his iron horse after the hard run. He was tired himself, and his face was white, but he went over the rods and cylinders as tenderly and carefully as if he was refreshing the muscles and sinews of a living creature. ”

“ It is pretty hard to say what a man should do when he hears the whistle of danger ahead or sees that a crash is coming. Even the best of us are liable to get confused at such a moment. What would you do if you woke up in the night and found a burglar holding a pistol at your head? There are no rules for such cases. What I would not do, though, is to reverse my engine, although many engineers are liable to lose their heads at a critical moment and make that mistake. It is a curious thing that reversing your engine suddenly when going at high speed makes the train go faster instead of slower. ”

“ When she had heard these words the woman hastened home, and all the villagers, old and young, hurried into the woods, by the pool, where they found four lions, two elephants, and one of their own tribe lying still and lifeless.
“The words of the elephant have turned out to be true, for no man goes nowadays into the silent and deserted woods but he feels as though something was haunting them, and thinks of goblinry, and starts at every sound. ”

“ Each was drawn out from the self-centre in which each had been concentrated in self; he to declare his love in the face of relentless foes, and she to cling to him, and protect him, when bruised and torn by her friends. ”

“ An engine pulls the cars, steam works the engine, and as for the engineer, the New Yorker never thinks of him except to growl at him when the train is late, and to advocate hanging him if there is an accident.
Meantime, what is the engineer of this fastest train in the world doing for the passenger? In the first place, the Chicago flyer is not driven by one but by many engineers. ”