Various

“ The quaint little hospice clung to the mountain side like a swallow's nest, high over the jungle-bedded Sungei, whose foaming, crashing torrents came down from the upper mountains like an endless charge of white cavalry to the sea. Punda was a good sort of a Malay, which means a bad sort of anything else. That is, he would plunder only on the securest principles, and never quarrel with a bigger man nor a better armed one than he. ”

“ Almost before I realized it I had reached the big trap, and then halted short, thrilled by the sound of something human. I looked up. Through the deepening mists and intervening boughs I saw the little child-figure of Iali creeping out upon the withered branches over the pit. For the instant I had no power to move, nor dared I speak, lest, overcome with sudden fright, the frail little one might lose her foothold. ”

“ But a deeper reading of this prosperous boniface of the jungles revealed the fact that he was capable of love,—yes, even a tender, human affection; and that little Iali, his five-year-old daughter, was the object of a worship in his heart even more fervent than that which he bestowed upon the five home-made clay gods before which, in a dark corner of the Dâk, he burned a vast deal of ill-smelling punk. The second year of Tsang's married life had hardly begun when his beautiful wife was bitten by a yellow viper while gathering healing herbs down in the valley. ”

“ Lacombe's inner office and introduced to my prospective employer, Mrs. Westinghouse, by means, of course, of pencil, and paper, and gestures, I hardly noticed in my excitement what manner of woman she was. I had enough to think of in keeping to the character I had assumed and in preparing in half an hour's time for a week's journey; for almost the first demand made by the strange woman was that I should go with her upon the noon train. The invalid had no doubt only a few days left to live, she explained, and every minute was precious. ”

“ As little Iali was the innkeeper's constant solace and companion, she went with him to the pit-digging, her father explaining to her the manner of capturing the "four-footed jungle-god," which facts, instead of frightening the child, only helped to increase the stock of her play gods and demons which she molded deftly from the red clay of the ravine. With the appearance of the new moon, that mascot of the Orientals, the pit was baited. For two days nothing was heard of the tiger, and Punda-Tsang began to fear that he had gone back to the hills by another route. ”

“ Here we reach the illustration of the first-mentioned fact, of which Tsang was ready to take advantage: that the Malay tiger is no gentleman. He knew that the beast will never walk up leisurely and take his bite like a smooth and oily clubman at a free lunch, but that the very instant that he smells blood he will drop flat, and, even if the feast is a mile away, will begin a slow, creeping journey towards it, wasting hours, perhaps, and working up a terrific hunger in the meantime. ”

“ Instead of gaining fame as the American George Eliot, I've been called Colorado Cow-girl and Bronco Buster. Instead of wielding the pen, I've driven a four-horse stage, branded cattle, broken saddle horses, sung in a church choir, run a blacksmith's shop, kept school, given music lessons, run a hotel, taught painting, carried mail, roughed it on horseback all the way from Colorado to Oregon, and taken a hand in pretty much everything else, except shoveling wind off the roof. ”

“ Mrs. Westinghouse had been smart enough to get a physician, who was there when we arrived, and who, honestly enough, I suppose, ascribed his death to natural causes. We could do nothing from lack of evidence."
"But the secret,—the mysterious formula?"
"Ah, that is the saddest part of the whole affair. Half crazed by her horrible experience in this house, and recalling her vow to make no use of any information gained while there, Miss Wood had no sooner escaped than she tore the true formula into pieces and threw it away. ”

“ As was inevitable, after hearing all this, my interest in the picture, and swan, and the key deepened sensibly. There was certainly a spell of the supernatural about these things for me. I had only to stand near the spot on which the eyes of the picture were fastened to experience the strangest, the most overwhelmingly significant sensations I had ever known. The spot was haunted by a presence for me, and as often as I stood there I would feel my heart throb and cease throbbing, my breath pant and cease panting, my very flesh turn cold and moist with consciousness and apprehension. ”

“ We have never known, in our 30 years of experience, of a single case of indigestion, loss of sleep, skin disease, or scurvy while faithfully using Ridge's Food.
The stomach requires action—it is so constructed that from the very first it is made for action. With the youngest infant the quantity of nourishment from the natural food (the mother's milk) is much less, because the stomach is incapable of taking care of as much as it can later, but at the same time action is going on, and nature does its work as the child grows, so it can take stronger food ”

“ For two days I had tramped, half starved, toward the rising sun, with the hope of reaching some cattle ranch near Denver. On the morning of the third day, as I was trudging through a thick undergrowth, I was suddenly startled by a woman's voice:—
"You didn't happen to spy a little speckled heifer back yonder, did you, stranger?"
It is said that upon the approach of a human being the first impulse of a man who has been lost in the woods is that biblically ascribed to the wicked, namely, "to flee when no man pursueth." ”

“ The next instant, a strange, huge shape crept stealthily out of the underwood, and advanced into the clearing toward the pit,—a ponderous black monster with the body of a beast, but lifting through the grass the head and shoulders of a human colossus. ”

“ Then Tsang planned he would starve the beast, let down a cage baited with more fresh meat, and, sliding the bars from above, haul the captured tiger out and sell him over again. All of this might have happened, but it didn't. Events somewhat stranger and more terrible for Punda-Tsang interfered, doubtless as another direct visitation of the vengeance of the little clay gods in the bungalow corner, half concealed in clouds of punk-smoke. ”

“ We were to look at stone for bridge building, and the blistering heat of the day made us willing to lose our sleep for the more comfortable traveling by starlight.
The horses jogged lazily through the coarse, thick dust on the river's levee, and the insects from the grain fields and the frogs from the sloughs had things wholly to themselves until Bill suddenly interrupted.
"Mrs. Chase is pretty enough yet to understand why she sent two fellows to the devil, isn't she?" ”

“ But I had never been alone with her, knowing that any accident happening to Iali while in my keeping would result seriously for me—perhaps cost me my life. The coolies were flying hither and thither, making the air ring with their loud wails. Such agitation on the part of these vagabonds roused me to a realization of the child's danger. Suddenly I turned my eyes and thoughts in the direction of the ravine where the tiger trap lay. I recalled vividly the child's interest in the "jungle-god" who was to be captured in the deep pit ”

“ Men with guns from all over the Union and gold the heaven we sweated for. Prayers, and court, and the gambling tables all running under one roof, and nary a woman's face showing up in the mass to give us courage. To be sure, there were vixenish ribs o' Satan who robbed, and killed, and drank with the worst of us; but until '51 we'd never the woman for reverence. Then, by degrees, the lawyers and a stray merchant or two aired their families, but things wasn't dizzy till pretty Grace Blanchard got out with her father. ”

“ Under a live oak, not thirty yards away, on the very edge of the cliff, stood Shorty Stokes. He had not heard us, and he stood looking at the moon which hung a sickle in the hot sky. The evening star was showing.
"The four of us were like stones. He could have got to Guinea before motion'd have come to us. Then, simultaneously with our steps forward, he turned and looked into our faces.
"It was a moment to test the nerve of any man. He stood it as we were used to seeing him face all things. ”

“ However, I never was one to give in that I was beaten by anything, first off, especially by a cow. Besides, that idea of having two nice pets had got a great hold on me. I made up my mind that if kindness could reclaim that erring cow she should be coddled like an infant. So next morning, bright and early, I started for the plum bush where she and the calf were tied, determined to make peace. ”

“ One day she chased an unlucky workman out onto the railroad bridge and kept him there until a train came along and the engineer slackened enough to take him on and carry him to Plum Station. Another time she got after a tramp that was camping on the bottom land among the willows, and forced him to take refuge in the forks of a crooked tree, where he roosted until one of us went down and called off Miss Bossie. In fact, the only return that calf ever made for all my loving care was to scare away tramps. ”

“ Ridge's Food is so prepared that only the normal action of the stomach is required to produce healthful growth and development, and the result has been good digestion, sound, healthy bodies, good teeth, strong, straight limbs, and a well-formed brain; the child becomes a model of healthful strength and childish beauty when fed on Ridge's Food, properly prepared—and its long continuance does not produce Scurvy and skin disease in its many forms. ”

“ Oh, yes. The heifer was the calf. Now, whether the cow disowned the calf, or the calf the cow, I never found out. Anyway, the day that the cow disappeared into the bottom land that little [Pg 34] calf trotted up to the house and tearfully begged to be loved. Well, you might have thought I'd had enough of pets for one while, but, no; the helplessness of that poor little calf so went to my heart that for weeks I rode nine miles every day for milk, and fed it to that little creature with my own hands. ”

“ The day awoke in fog such as the oldest inhabitant had never seen. The East River was blocked with ice and soon became a shrieking bedlam of groping and bewildering craft, whose pilots could scarcely see their hands before their faces.
At half past nine the "Rappahannock" left Brooklyn, well laden with passengers, and started on her customary trip almost directly across the river—a very short and unusually easy voyage. Before even reaching the middle of the stream, however, the ice and fog had thrown her completely out of her course. ”

“ She added that, as she took no interest in coin collecting, a dollar was simply a dollar to her and that she thought a woman was very foolish to take up with a fad which might ruin her happiness.
Her unknown caller thought so, too, admired her taste in millinery, took the address of her son, and, clutching the fatal coin more firmly than ever, drove back to Erie, where he boarded the New York night express.
To the young man who still clutched the silver dollar sleep was impossible. ”

“ It was a wretched piece of work, that picture, representing a [Pg 12] man dressed in some sort of court dress of the last century, and it would have seemed ineffectual and amateurish to the last degree but for the truly marvelous expression of the eyes, which were fixed on a certain spot in the wall opposite with an earnestness and intensity which made me feel that there was some hidden significance in this look. The man not only looked at the spot himself, but he compelled me to do the same, and forced me, by the insistent command of his eyes, to look again and again. ”

“ Ah—God—out in the darkness I saw Emory taking advantage of the delay.
" 'None of you is so much a cur as to let the life run in a man who, under his honor, couldn't yield a rival three minutes' grace.
" 'But, with the camp against me and Emory the friend of the sorriest, I couldn't face the music when the justice was done.
" 'It is not mercy I ask. It is life hereafter. Come.'
"With a common impulse we started forward, only to halt in a frozen horror as Stokes' bronco threw up his head in alarm to watch with us the backward somersaulting of his master's body over the precipice. ”

“ In his anxiety to get a cup of coffee for his wife, he had lost his hat, then lost his change, and, lastly, lost the train.
Why did he not follow his bride at once? What mysterious spell had come upon this seventeen-hour bridegroom that he should fly from her as swiftly as the fast express could carry him? His hand held the solution of the problem—simple, yet unexplainable—a silver dollar! It held the secret he must unravel before he could return to her ”

“ What I was going to say was that before I'd been settled on that ranch three days some men came our way driving a herd of Texas cattle to Denver, and, as a late snowstorm came up just then, they decided to camp on good feed in the hills in front of my ranch. That afternoon they came over to our house to buy bread, and while they were there they mentioned to me that they had a nice cow that had just calved, and offered if I would buy the cow to throw in the calf, as they were just going to kill it. Well, here was where my weak spot came in. ”

“ It is an uncontested and fundamental truth of hygiene that water supplied for drinking purposes must be of the very best quality and perfectly pure and free from the slightest trace of organic matter. The desire for water of this kind among intelligent people is seen in the large number of natural waters now offered for sale. It is known, too, that in the treatment of many common forms of disease natural mineral waters are one of the most important factors. ”