Just Like A Man

1895

And It Cost Him a Sealskin Cloak to Patch Up a Peace.

This is the sad story of two absentminded men. One of them told it last night with tears in his voice.

"Jennie Allen," he said, "was one of my wife's girlhood friends. Her father is a rich man who lives in central Illinois.

"When we came back to Chicago to live, my wife had not seen Miss Allen for three years. One day I went down to Mr. Allen's home to see him on business. After we had talked that over Mr. Allen asked me if I knew that his daughter was married. Naturally I was surprised.

" 'Jennie has been married more than a year,' he said, 'and she is living in Normal Park, just outside of Chicago, you know. Tell your wife to go out and call on her.'

"I told him my wife would be delighted and came on back to Chicago. When I got back home that night, I told my wife about it, and she smiled.

" 'So Jennie Allen is married, is she? She lives out at Normal Park, and I'm to go out and call on her, am I? Of course, you brainy man, you did not remember to get the present name of the Miss Allen who was?'

"Well, I hadn't thought of asking whom Miss Allen married, and I wrote to her father in a day or two, telling him that my wife found his direction rather indefinite and asking him for further particulars.

"His answer came by return mail. 'It is easy enough to find,' he wrote. 'Their house is only two blocks from the depot at Normal Park, and everybody who lives there can point it out. Do tell your wife to call as soon as she can, for Jennie is the mother of a little boy, and she is simply dying, she writes me, to see her old friend.'

"I took that letter home and handed it in triumph to my wife. 'I guess that will settle your difficulties,' I ventured to remark.

"She read it through in silence. Then a superior, pitying sort of smile gathered about her lips.

" 'Oh, Jennie's house is only two blocks from the depot, is it? Anybody can point it out to me, can they? All I've got to do is to go out there and ask the first man I meet, is it? Well, will you be kind enough to tell me whose house I am to ask for when I get off the train at Normal Park? Shall I ask for the house of the husband of Jennie Allen, or what shall I do?'

"I called a messenger boy and sent this telegram:

" 'James Allen, Woodville, Ills.: What is the full name and address of your daughter's husband?'

"One hour later the answer came. I finally succeeded in making peace in the family, but it took a sealskin cloak to do it." — Chicago Mail.

The Combustible Clive

1910

As long ago as the middle of the eighteenth century, a famous Georgian actress, Mrs. Kitty Clive, felt the call of the nerves commonly associated with modern women. The whole green room, according to the author of "Garrick and his Circle," feared her tantrums.

Her character stood high, but her clean, wholesome nature and honest heart scarcely offset her temper. She was the one player Garrick feared, and he did everything he could to disperse her nerve storms, or, if they broke, assuage them. It is among the legends of the English stage that he said to her:

"I have heard of tartar and brimstone, but you are the cream of one and the flower of the other!" — Youth's Companion.

How Indians Find Way Through Woods

1920

Stefansson Disputes Old Belief in Sixth Sense

The apparently marvelous way in which Indians, Eskimos and other primitive people make their way through forests, snow-covered areas or other regions that have little to indicate direction to white newcomers, has led to a widespread belief that they possess a mysterious sixth sense of direction.

Stefansson, the Arctic traveler, who has lived much with Eskimos, is very skeptical about the existence of any superiority of sense of direction among primitive peoples of any kind, and gives strong evidence from personal experience that Eskimos have no such superiority.

The ability of Indians and others to find their way he attributes solely to their familiarity with the country through which they are passing. They note many things that they have seen before and that have no significance to the stranger in their land.

White men can and do acquire the same ability to find their way when they have learned to know the country. When the land is equally strange to the white man and the Indian or the Eskimo, the white man, because of his better developed reasoning power, is more likely to have a correct line of direction than the Eskimo.

Tannaumirk Killed a Deer

Stefansson tells how, at a time when his little party was in great need of food, one of his Eskimos, Tannaumirk, came home late at night and caused great rejoicing by relating his success in killing a deer which he had started to pursue early in the morning. He was the hero of the hour and recounted his adventures in great detail.

When he finished his story Stefansson asked him whether it was a long way to the spot where the meat lay and whether he had cached it safely. The Eskimo's answer was that he had covered the meat with snow and set traps by it, and that the place was a long way off. Stefansson volunteered to go with him the next morning, but Tannaumirk said this would not be necessary; if he were to start early in the morning he would, without assistance, be able to get the meat home by night.

Bright and early the next day he was off with sled and dogs, but it had long been pitch dark when he returned. In answer to questions he said that he had been hurried all the time; that he had hastily loaded the meat on the sled, had set two additional traps by the deer killed, making four altogether, and had come right back home.

Covered 20 Miles Making Trip

The next day about noon Tannaumirk had gone off somewhere to set fox traps. Stefansson and his companion, Dr. Anderson, heard some of their dogs howling and whining behind a ridge about half a mile away from the camp. The sounds indicated that the dogs had been caught in the traps. As the weather was about 40 degrees below zero, there was danger that the dogs' paws, if pinched in the traps, would freeze quickly and render the dogs valueless for service. Stefansson and Anderson hastened therefore to the rescue.

They found four of the dogs, as they expected, with their feet caught in traps. But what greatly surprised them was to find these traps around the deer kill, which Tannaumirk had taken so many hours to reach in his trips hack and forth. The explanation was that Tannaumirk, in starting after the deer, had followed it as it took a circuitous course of more than ten miles.

After shooting the deer he had followed the trail over which he had come and in going after its meat he had once more made the circuitous trip, covering more than twenty miles in a round trip to a spot that was less than half a mile away.