THE BOOK OF 
 LIE5BYJOI1H 
 
Q?-/ 
 
 ^ 
 
 <7 
 
 University of California Berkeley 
 
 The Theodore H. Koundakjian 
 
 Collection 
 of American Humor 
 

 
 ' 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES BI 
 
 WITH MANY PICTURES 
 FROM PEN DRAWINGS 
 BY FRANK VERBECK 
 
 THE MORSE COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
 1896 
 
Copyright, 1896 
 By JOHN LANGDON HEATON. 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 
 
ARGUMENT 
 
 To the lovers of truth these pages are com 
 mended. 
 
 Nothing is so truthful as an honest lie, since 
 it bears its character writ large upon its frank 
 countenance ; while truth, in the guise of in 
 credibility, oft cries for credence like a hussy. 
 
 As for the lie insidious, the lie treacherous, 
 the deceitful lie sure 'tis only by study that 
 we may learn to know it, as the surgeon probes 
 the wound, yet unlovingly. 
 
 So here's to you readers, wishing the end of 
 falsehoods and all manner of vain speaking ! 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGB. 
 
 I. "WHEN I WAS WITH JAMESON" .... 9 
 II. "THERE is NO ' ROAD REFORM' FOR THE 
 
 FLINTY PATH OF TRUE LOVE" .... 21 
 
 III. LOVE WILL FIND A WAY? No; INGENUITY! 34 
 
 IV. LOVE LAUGHS AT LIES 45 
 
 V. IN WHICH A VISITOR LEARNS SOMETHING OF 
 
 THE COUNTRY 60 
 
 VI. MARCH GALES AND OTHERS 73 
 
 VII. DAUGHTERS OF EVE 86 
 
 VIII. LOVE HATH MURDERED SLEEP 99 
 
 ' IX. A WANDERER FROM THE WRATH . . . . 112 
 X. THE FISH AND His LIE ARE NEVER PARTED 122 
 XI. THE EXPECTED HAPPENS ; ALSO THE UN 
 EXPECTED 132 
 
 XII. BACK TO THE SOIL 142 
 
 XIII. NEMESIS OVERTAKES JOHN ECKELS .... 153 
 
 XIV. LA BELLE DAME JAMAIS SANS MERCI ... 165 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "WHEN I WAS WITH JAMESON." 
 
 " WHETST I was with Jameson at Krugersdorp " 
 began the returned miner 
 
 " The mention of South Africa and < the Crush- 
 ings of all the Rand ' brings to my 
 mind," said Dr. Binninger, lighting 
 another of the returned miner's ci 
 gars and hitching his chair a trifle 
 nearer to the big open fire, " thoughts 
 of the many curious ways in which 
 money is made and lost. Money 
 makes the mare go, and conversely, 
 the mare makes money go. The 
 horse, gentlemen " 
 
 The boom of the doctor's big voice 
 was interrupted by brisk steps out 
 side the door and the entrance of a 
 tall, lean man with a saturnine coun- 
 enance and drooping black moustache, followed 
 
IO THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 rather hesitatingly by a short, fat man, with a close- 
 clipped, pointed beard, who wore the air of a stranger. 
 Together they suggested Don Quixote and Sancho 
 Panza. 
 
 It was a strange scene they looked upon, as their 
 eyes wandered over the dark walls and dusky ceiling 
 of the quaintest club-room in New York. Heavy, 
 sagging beams, black with age, spanned the low 
 ceiling. The huge jaws of a fireplace, two hundred 
 years old, were fanged with gigantic andirons cur 
 iously twisted out of wrought iron, and standing 
 nearly man-high upon the uneven brick hearth. 
 Outside, in what was by day one of the busiest down 
 town streets, reigned the quiet of the grave. It was 
 as if the ghosts of all the dead and gone New York 
 ers, who had two hundred years ago strolled Nassau 
 street and the Maagde Paatje, had resumed their 
 sway and driven forth the bustling presence of their 
 successors. 
 
 Grouped round an open fire of big beech logs 
 were about a dozen men, most of whom had the 
 look of the typical New Yorker who has prospered, 
 and whose appearance gives little hint of his pro 
 fession. 
 
 The plump newcomer was introduced by his guide, 
 long John Eckels, as Mr. Parker Adams, and was 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 II 
 
 soon stretching his short legs toward the fire from a 
 comfortable easy-chair in the wide semi-circle. 
 
 " As you came in, Mr. Adams," said Owen Lang- 
 don, one of the group of men by the fire, "we were 
 speaking of horses, and I had it in mind to tell a 
 little incident which once came to my notice. There 
 was, about a year ago, a saddle-horse down in Bay 
 Ridge which died of love, and for a lady. This ani 
 mal cherished such a deep affection for its fair young 
 owner, that it grew inconsolable when she became 
 engaged to a bicycle young man, and gave up her 
 daily canter in Prospect 
 Park. Day after day the 
 noble animal mourned 
 in its luxurious box- 
 stall, or moped about 
 the pasture with dull 
 eye and lifeless attitude. One 
 day the thoughtless cause of 
 so much misery came stroll 
 ing by the pasture fence, 
 leaning on the arm of the 
 young man. Just opposite where the agonized ani 
 mal stood, she took her lover affectionately by the 
 ear, and, without apparent difficulty, dragged his 
 head down upon her shoulder* Then, as she mur- 
 
12 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 mured low in his ear, words of endearment, such as 
 once she had lavished upon the horse, the intelli 
 gent beast's sufferings grew too great to bear. 
 Waiting to hear no more than * It's its own ownest 
 darlingest's 'ittlest mopsy wopsy rosebud dumpling 
 toad, so it is,' the maddened animal began sawing 
 its throat along the barbed wire of the fence. The 
 blood from its wounded neck flecked the fair cheek 
 of the girl, and recalled her to her senses. By the 
 most heroic exertions the life of the animal was 
 saved, only that it might give, on a subsequent oc 
 casion, further proof of its devotion. 
 
 " The young lady soon forgot the incident and 
 was married. A few weeks later " 
 
 " Hem ! The horse, gentlemen, as I was about 
 to remark," said big Dr. Binninger, stroking his 
 short, gray side-whiskers, " is a noble animal. It 
 invented the horse-race when it gamboled with its 
 mate in the unfenced fields of Eden, fresh from its 
 Maker's hands. It was left for man to invent bet 
 ting on horse-races. Man thinks himself wiser than 
 the horse, but cannot eat so much, nor run so fast ; 
 yet these are his best tricks. I am a Kentuckian, my 
 self, as you know, hence I sympathize deeply with 
 my old friend, Col. James Hudson, of Lexington, 
 who, in the palmy days of the Hudson stables, was 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 13 
 
 one of the most open-hearted men of the old state. 
 But his money went up, paradoxical as it may seem, 
 in oil wells and silver mines, until a year ago all 
 that was left to him was one useless, old animal, 
 that he called ' Baldy ' short for Osbaldistone. 
 
 "Well, suh, one day, as Col. Hudson was lying 
 flat on his back in the pasture, meditating whether 
 it was unmanly for a Southern gentleman of the old 
 school to seek self-destruction, old Baldy came and 
 nosed him until he was compelled to get up, then, 
 gently gripping his sleeve, led him away to the 
 middle of the field, where he had pawed a deep 
 hole under an old oak. There Baldy went down on 
 his knees, and presently drew forth, with a whinny of 
 pleasure, a broad, golden coin, which he laid in the 
 colonel's lap. Gentlemen, it was a Spanish doubloon 
 of unimpeachable virtue and ancient mint. Hud 
 son's gloom vanished in a minute. Running to 
 borrow a spade, he had presently unearthed a strong 
 box, heavy with similar gold pieces. Faithful 
 Baldy, unable to lift the box, had, with the stumps 
 of his broken, old teeth, painfully gnawed a hole 
 through the iron-bound cover, and taken out a sample 
 coin for his master. With tears of gratitude stream 
 ing down his face, Hudson fell on Baldy's neck and 
 sobbed. He will never sell the dear old horse," 
 
14 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 " Get much ? " queried Jim Hart. 
 
 "I never ventured to make intrusive inquiries," 
 replied Dr. Binninger, rather stiffly ; " but common 
 report placed the value of the contents of the box 
 at $37,519. It is supposed that the coins were buried 
 there by some of the early Spanish explorers of 
 our noble waterways." 
 
 " Reminds me," said Hart, " of the hypnotic 
 horse of the Woonasquatucket. Belonged to one 
 Cargill, farmer down in Rhode Island. Went State 
 Fair, Narragansett Park, last Fall. Remember? 
 Had a fakir there. Shammed dead. Hypnotic 
 trance. Buried. Ten cents a peep. Horse got 
 wind of it. Two days later Cargill saw horse in 
 pasture, waving front hoofs before nose of suscep 
 tible young mare. Svengali business. Slow music. 
 See ? By and by, young mare keeled right over 
 into big hole, horses had pawed out with hoofs. 
 Other horses just going to paw dirt back into hole 
 on top of mare. Cargill said nay, nay. Always 
 thought Cargill chump. Pity spoil experiment." 
 
 The fire crackled low, and presently, with a part 
 ing flicker, went out, leaving a great bed of glowing, 
 coals that cast big, weird shadows upon the black 
 walls. The room was dim with cigar smoke, and 
 eloquent of peace, hospitality, and comfort. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. I", 
 
 Presently a deep sigh of content broke from the 
 huge chair into whose depths John Eckels was lux 
 uriously burrowing, and the knight of the sorrowful 
 countenance spoke : " If it be truth the poet sings, 
 that a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering hap 
 pier things, then I owe you gratitude. Hart. The 
 sense of having comfortably dined, the glorious fire 
 and boon companionship give me pleasure's crown 
 of pleasure in remembering a former condition 
 which was next door to hell itself. Doubtless some 
 of you have wondered how my cadaverous frame 
 has been proof against the good cheer of the Trav 
 elers' Club, whose magic cooking is well advertised 
 by the comfortable girth of some of you. I am 
 sure no one could have guessed that my extreme 
 emaciation is due to passing two years of my life in 
 a hypnotic boarding-house. 
 
 " It was when I was a young man, newly come to 
 the city," resumed Eckels, after a few quick 
 puffs at his cigar, "that I visited, while looking for 
 board, a certain house, which has since been pulled 
 down. I didn't particularly like its looks, but for 
 some reason, which I now understand better than I 
 did then, after seeing the mistress, I felt irresistibly 
 impelled to take a room. No, she was not person 
 ally attractive. I fared, as I then thought^ on the 
 
16 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 fatness of the earth. So did we all. The guests 
 reveled in roast turkey, in exquisite soups, in rare 
 old cheese, and perfect coffee. Did anyone so much 
 as mention a wish for a special article of food, it 
 was forthcoming, with a smile, immediately or at 
 the next meal. It ought to have been a happy fam 
 ily, yet the boarders somehow seemed a lean, ill-fed, 
 and low-spirited lot, and, as you may well believe, 
 none more so than myself. 
 
 " One day a tall, fine-looking gentleman called to 
 look at rooms. If Mrs. Smith had known she was 
 dealing with a professional hypnotist, she would 
 have shown him the door. In a moment the pro 
 fessor felt that she was trying to hypnotize him to 
 take a room. Exerting all his own psychic force, he 
 soon had her will under complete control. He 
 guessed the truth. She had for years been hypno 
 tizing her servants to serve, and her guests to de 
 vour, slops for coffee, salt pork for tenderloin, and 
 chuck roast for turkey ; and had amassed a consid 
 erable sum of money. She had not otherwise inter 
 fered with us, than to secure large rates for poor 
 board. We were all able to attend to our work. 
 She could have played hob with our business ar 
 rangements, and got rich faster, but I think she was 
 afraid of criminal proceedings. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. I? 
 
 "Well, to make a long story short, Prof. Lauder- 
 dale was a good sort, and he resolved to rescue us, 
 and feed us back to health at Mrs. Smith's expense. 
 
 " So he hypnotized the old lady in turn into pam 
 pering us with real luxuries, and into imagining that 
 the codfish-and-prunes regime was still in force. 
 Daily her ill-gotten gains melted away ; daily the 
 boarders regained their strength and spirits. Never 
 was such a boarding-house known before or since ! 
 We breakfasted, lunched and dined like Lucullus. 
 Mrs. Smith remained perfectly happy, little know 
 ing that her hypnotic power was being sapped with 
 her bank balance. Most of the boarders got as fat 
 as butter, but in my own case, the lean habit was 
 too firmly fixed to be eradicated. When we were 
 all restored to pretty good condition, Lauderdale let 
 us into the secret, and was amply rewarded by our 
 gratitude. Mrs. Smith is now the unhappy inmate 
 of a lunatic asylum, where she imagines that she is 
 Queen Victoria, and dines daily on seven-course 
 dinners, cooked by the fires of an ill-regulated imag 
 ination." 
 
 " When I was with Jameson at Krugersdorp " 
 began the returned miner 
 
 "Just a moment, if you please," said Harry Por 
 ter, jumping to his feet, a tall, impetuous, fair-haired 
 
1 8 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 young .ellow, looking like the scholar and athlete 
 that he was. " I see the night is getting old, and I 
 have an announcement that has been trembling on 
 my tongue all the evening. I would like that Jame 
 son story saved till the next Ladies' Night, when the 
 fact is, there is a I mean," he ended desperately, 
 ' * I got examined for life insurance to-day. And " 
 
 There was a moment of blank silence, when Eck 
 els jumped to his feet, shouting : " Why, of course ! 
 Boys, he's going to be married ! Give us your flip 
 per, old chappie ! " And in a moment Harry's 
 back was being slapped, his hand boisterously 
 shaken, his ribs punched, and a chorus of excited 
 comment arose. 
 
 " Break away ! " shouted Tom Fenton, a man of 
 medium height, with a smooth-shaven, actor-like face, 
 and hair slightly tinged with gray," Give him a chance 
 to breathe. This mob and the mention of insur- 
 ance remind me of a crowd I saw once in San Fran 
 cisco. It was about 9 o'clock in the forenoon. 
 The throng reached right across Market street, and 
 tapered off away down the block. As luck would 
 have it, a runaway horse dashed into the thickest of 
 it, just as I reached the spot, and in the accident 
 .seven insurance agents were slightly, and three se 
 riously/hurt. About a dozen other insurance men 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 19 
 
 attended the wounded. This I learned afterward. 
 A reporter of the Standard undertook to discover 
 why so many insurance men were waiting on that 
 particular corner so early in the day, and learned 
 that there was within the building a man whose fire 
 policy was due to expire at noon, and who thus far 
 had declined to reinsure." 
 
 "I suppose, Harry," said Dr. Binninger, "that 
 the young lady in the case is Miss Copeland, whom 
 I have unfortunately seen only at a distance as yet. 
 A charming lady, charming lady ! Red-headed 
 girls are the nicest " 
 
 " It's the younger one ; the brown-haired one," 
 muttered Harry Porter, hastily, with a flush of an 
 noyance. 
 
 "Just so," said the imperturbable Binninger, "let 
 me congratulate you anew, sir ! As I was saying, 
 red-haired girls would be the nicest kind of girls, if 
 it weren't for the incontrovertible fact that the other 
 Jcjnds of girls are just as nice as girls can be. Red 
 hair, gentlemen, denotes an oratorical temperament. 
 Fitzsimmons is red-headed. So was Thomas Jeffer 
 son. Cicero was red-headed, or else he wasn't. I 
 have forgotten which, but really the point is imma 
 terial. 
 
 " It seems undisputed that red hair generates heat 
 
20 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 more rapidly than other kinds. I remember that 
 Mamie Wayne, a dear old friend I used to know in 
 Olathe, Kansas, was red-headed. One day she was 
 cleaning her last winter's blue silk with benzine, 
 when the inflammable stuff took fire, presumably 
 from her fair tresses falling low over her work. In 
 a moment the room was filled with heated air, which 
 expelled the cooler and heavier atmosphere. Kan 
 sas houses, I may parenthetically remark, are of very 
 light and flimsy construction, which partially ac 
 counts for the easy victory they yield to the indi 
 genous cyclone. As the air grew hotter from the 
 blazing furnes, the entire house, rising at first slowly, 
 soon shot upward like a Montgolfier balloon. There 
 was little wind, and it could presently be seen, at the 
 height of two miles, burning so furiously that not a 
 piece of it, except a few bricks out of the chimney, 
 ever reached the ground. My dear young friend 
 was never again seen alive. But come, gentlemen, 
 the hour is late, and some of us are no longer so 
 young as once we^were." 
 
 With lingering farewells and bursts of laughter, the 
 men slowly drifted out of the room. There was the 
 sound, for a little space, of parting footsteps on the 
 deserted pavement, and then the narrow street com 
 posed itself again to sleep until the dawn of a new day. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 " THERE IS NO ' ROAD REFORM ' FOR THE FLINTY 
 PATH OF TRUE LOVE." 
 
 "BEEN bicycling, hey?" queried Dr. Binninger, 
 glancing down the dining-table in Owen Langdon's 
 Brooklyn home. His eyes rested upon a pretty girl 
 with brown hair, whom you would suspect at once 
 as being the youngest of the Copeland sisters. 
 After catching Harry Porter's look of devotion, as 
 he gazed on her, you would have been sure of it. 
 
 " Yes," replied Mrs. Langdon, seeing that the 
 lovers had not noticed the query; " alas for weary 
 me, we have ! If I ever undertake to chaperon an 
 other lot of young people on such a trip well ! " 
 
 " Roads good ? " 
 
 "Fine! " said Harry; "we ran out along the 
 Merrick road for miles. It's in perfect condition." 
 
 " I believe great progress has been made in road 
 improvement in this vicinity," was Dr. Binninger's 
 comment. " I regret that in my own beloved South 
 a less satisfactory state of affairs exists, largely, it is 
 true, owing to the unfortunate poverty of the people. 
 Here and there, however, good work is being done, 
 
 21 
 
22 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 as by my dear old friend, Dr. Onesimus Rylance of 
 Carson, Tennessee, Hem ! " 
 
 "Won't you tell us about it ?" queried the hostess; 
 " I'm sure it would interest our young wheelmen and 
 women." 
 
 " Hem ! " repeated the doctor, " if my explana 
 tion proves too technical for a social occasion, pray 
 check me. The lower orders of creation are, as we 
 naturalists know, less easily subject to death than 
 the mammalia. A sheep-tick's locomotive powers 
 are stimulated, rather than otherwise, by bisection, 
 and a decapitated snake will writhe, if not until sun 
 down, at any rate a long time. This circumstance 
 suggested to Dr. Rylance the idea of splicing snakes 
 of different varieties to produce a less objectionable 
 composite reptile than most of those common in our 
 section. Selecting a rattlesnake and black-snake of 
 equal size, he decapitated both, and joined the rat 
 tler's body and the black-snake's head with a neat 
 suture. The result was a snake which could coil 
 and strike all day without inconvenience to itself or 
 others. Soon, in accordance with the well-known 
 Darwinian law of modification, the composite snake's 
 nose became indurated to a high degree. The doc 
 tor had merely intended to produce a curiosity, but 
 seeing how rapidly the compound snake gained 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 23 
 
 strength by exercise, he conceived the idea of use 
 fully employing it. The result was so favorable, 
 that he has now a whole detachment of Patent Com 
 pound-Snake Stone-Crushers at work, solving, for 
 that part of Tennessee, the problem of good roads. 
 It has been computed that a Compound Snake hits 
 a stone with a force considerably greater than that 
 of a hammer swung by an adult male human, listen 
 ing for the dinner-horn." 
 
 Ann Copeland, who was in a mood to beam upon 
 everyone, broke into a ringing peal of laughter. 
 
 " Oh, you funny man ! " she gasped, bending upon 
 the doctor a look from her big, dark eyes, which 
 Harry considered a wasted sweet. 
 
 " My dear young lady," said Dr. Binninger, in 
 his most grandiose manner, " I hope it is only be 
 cause this is our first meeting that you find me 
 amusing. In my own state, by men at least, I as 
 sure you I am accustomed to be taken seriously." 
 
 The offended doctor was a picture of pomposity 
 Herculean of build, smug-faced, side-whiskered, he 
 looked like a large paper edition of Depew, with 
 wide margins, and the sense of humor expurgated. 
 
 " Oh, I say, Langdon," interposed Harry Porter, 
 hastily, " what was the rest of that yarn you were 
 telling us about the horse that fell in love ? " 
 
24 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 Langdon glanced around the table. There were 
 present besides the host and his wife, Dr. Binnin- 
 ger, and the newly-engaged pair John Eckels, a 
 young niece of the Langdons, as pretty as a picture, 
 and as silent; and Miss Copeland, Ann's elder sis 
 ter, of the Titianesque locks, and herself an exceed 
 ingly pretty girl. 
 
 " Oh, it wasn't much of a story," he began, 
 modestly. " This horse, you must know, ladies, 
 had fallen into despair because his young mistress, 
 becoming engaged, had, with the cruel unconscious 
 ness of love, neglected him. -He attempted suicide 
 by cutting his throat on a barbed-wire fence, but 
 was rescued and healed. The wire was removed, 
 and a plain board fence substituted. One day, how 
 ever, the horse was missed from its pasture. The 
 loss was promptly advertised. About three days 
 later a handsome young Irishman came to the door 
 this was in Bay Ridge in answer to the adver 
 tisement. 
 
 " ' And have you found dear old Hero ? ' asked 
 the young lady, now a happy bride. 
 
 " ' Sure, Oi kem to tell ye, mum, seein' as its me 
 day ahf, that day before yistiddy as I was goin' me 
 roun's, jist in the gray o' the marntn' Oi'm a po- 
 leeceman, mum Oi see a moighty foine harse an- 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 2$ 
 
 swerin' to the description, a-standin' outside a build- 
 in in the foorst ward o' Long Island City, the same 
 bein' on me bate. Sure, it was a wise baste to get 
 that far, ahl by himself. He must ha' come ahl 
 the way 'roun* by Jamaiky an' Mashpet', bekase he 
 cud niver ha' crashed th' shwing bridge at Hunter's 
 Pint widout wings, it bein' ahlways as open as Tony 
 Miller's bar. So Oi kem to break it to ye, loike. 
 Ye'll niver luk upon 'im again in this loife, though 
 maybe in the hereafter.' 
 
 " ' But why ? What was the building ? ' 
 
 " * Sure, mem, its meself's be the lasht to say a 
 wurrud to dim the eye of beauty wid one usheless 
 tear. 'Twas a sausage factory, and that's God's own 
 tfutV 
 
 "Thus you see," concluded Langdon, " by the 
 exercise of what persistence and ingenuity Hero was 
 enabled to quit himself of a life which had grown 
 intolerable." 
 
 " Oh, how lovely ! " murmured Ann Copeland, 
 glancing shyly up at Harry; "why don't you ever 
 tell me things like that ? " 
 
 " Would you like me to ?" he murmured; "I'm 
 afraid I can't. lean only tell you the truth; you're 
 the dearest " 
 
 " And yet," said John Eckels, pulling at his long, 
 
26 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 drooping moustache, " I suppose dogs surpass all 
 other animals in their capacity for affection for hu 
 man beings. I myself once owned a collie which 
 delighted in going with me on camping expeditions. 
 On one occasion a cold wave struck the camp, and I 
 began to cough badly. Just then I missed my dog, and 
 was in very bad humor about it for a whole day, but 
 at night was astounded to see the animal returning 
 at full speed, with a couple of thick flannel shirts 
 and a bottle of something pretty good for coughs, 
 gripped firmly in his teeth. He had traveled twenty 
 miles to get them from a country store, which was 
 left unwatched at dinner-time. 
 
 On another occasion he saved me from a rattle 
 snake's deadly bite by thrusting his own body be 
 tween me and the angry reptile. When bitten, off 
 he started at full speed. Thinking him mad, I ran 
 after him, and, following his trail, presently found 
 him in a moonshiners' camp, whose existence I had 
 never suspected, eagerly lapping up a little pool of 
 anti-toxic remedy which he had obtained by knock 
 ing over and smashing several demijohns. He re 
 covered all right. 
 
 "I think," Eckels went on,, " foe was the most 
 intelligent dog I ever knew. When I was. living in 
 Chebunticook, Maine, he established in winter a to- 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 2/ 
 
 boggan slide of his own on one of the sfeep hills 
 that abound in that town. His first purely imitative 
 step was to tear a huge strip of birch bark from a 
 tree. The surface of this he rubbed with a cake of 
 soap, abstracted from my guest chamber. He used 
 to froth so at the mouth from chewing soap, by the 
 way, that he started a fine mad-dog scare in Che- 
 bunticook, although it was midwinter. His method 
 of using the toboggan was to lie down upon it at the 
 hilltop, holding the lower edge up with his teeth and 
 steering by dragging along the snow his bushy tail, 
 which, after three days of coasting, was worn as 
 bare as a rat's." 
 
 " Now you tell one, Harry," whispered Ann Cope- 
 land. 
 
 " I can't, love; on my life I can't," groaned 
 Harry, in visible dejection. 
 
 " Very well, Mr. Porter ! Don't give yourself 
 any trouble on my account," she said; and before 
 the bewildered Harry could reply, the girl had 
 turned, with her sweetest smile, to Dr. Binninger, who 
 sat at her other side. 
 
 " Doctor," she began, " I am very much inter 
 ested in the subject. Surely you, with your wide 
 knowledge of men and affairs, must know of similar 
 instances of canine devotion." 
 
28' 
 
 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 " Certainly, my dear young lady ! bless me, yes !" 
 responded Dr. Binninger; and the vast smile, evoked 
 by the flattering appeal, was marvelous to behold. 
 " Hem ! If the subject is deemed one suited to a 
 mixed gathering, I will relate a little reminiscence 
 of a famous temperance revival in Yarmouth, Nova 
 Scotia. Jerry Dibdin,* a noted drunkard of the 
 place, had a dog which became much interested in 
 the meetings. Again and again the animal would 
 run to the door of the little open tent, under which 
 
 they were held, whine wistfully, and trot away again. 
 One day Dibdin, drunker than usual, was unsteadily 
 standing beside a low hand-cart in the long village 
 street, when Rover, who had never before been 
 known to do so rude a thing, ran plump against him, 
 upsetting him into the cart, where he lay sprawled 
 upon a few remnants of ah of deteriorated fish, 
 utterly unable to rise. The dog, with one quick, 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 29 
 
 glad bark of joy, grasped the handle bar of the cart, 
 and tugged away at it until he finally trotted, with 
 his queerly assorted load, right down the middle 
 aisle of the tent, and paused, panting, but happy, at 
 the mourners' bench. When Dibdin recovered, he 
 was so moved by this proof of the faithful animal's 
 devotion, that he did not touch a drop of liquor for 
 seventeen days." 
 
 " Oh, if I could only be loved like that ! " sighed 
 Ann Copeland, gazing appealingly up at the gigan 
 tic narrator. 
 
 What Dr. Binninger said in reply was never 
 known. It could not have been wise, or worthy of 
 recalling. 
 
 " Fie, Dr. Binninger !" was Ann's response, " if 
 a man is as old as his heart, who here is so young 
 as you ? " 
 
 " The little minx! " thought Mrs. Langdon. But 
 she only said: " Owen, what was the queer incident 
 you were once telling about the dog that could 
 count?" 
 
 " Crows can count two, but not three or four," 
 observed Harry Porter, in a desperate attempt to 
 win laurels as a raconteur. Then he blushed and 
 became six feet two of blonde embarrassment. 
 
 " The incident I am about to relate did not come 
 
36 THE BOOK OF LIES, 
 
 under my own eye," began Langdon ; " a business 
 acquaintance told me about it. For a long time the 
 owner of the animal, Bent Burdock, a methodical old 
 mountaineer in Murfreesboro', Tennessee, was puz 
 zled to guess how the dog managed to know exactly 
 at what hour in the morning to awaken him, by 
 thrusting its cold muzzle against his face. One day 
 he was permitted to oversleep himself two hours. 
 Waking with a start, he presently remembered that 
 on the previous night he had omitted to take his 
 regular 9 o'clock dram of tansy bitters. The truth 
 was out. The dog had simply reckoned from 9 P. M. 
 to 7 A. M., eight hours, by counting the monotonous 
 thump, thump, thump on the floor, as he wagged his 
 tail, 72 thumps to the minute, 4,320 to the hour, wak 
 ing Bent just after the 34,560^1 wag. The dog had 
 learned to count by tending sheep." 
 
 " Do you see," said Mrs. Langdon, in a low tone, 
 to John Eckels who sat at her right, " how that out 
 rageous girl is making love to the old fool ? There I 
 I ought not to speak so about a guest ! Owen would 
 ask him and his silly old stories ! " 
 
 " Owen is a pretty good teller of tales, himself," 
 remarked Eckels. 
 
 "Yes, but that's different," said the lady, turning 
 upon Eckels such a pair of clear gray eyes that he 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 31 
 
 presently fell to thinking, with his divided mind 
 partly upon Miss Copeland's ruddy locks, that he 
 also would like to have such a champion. 
 
 " Please tell something, Mr. Eckels," added the 
 hostess, in an undertone ; " anything to distract her 
 attention. Look what a picture of misery poor 
 Harry is ! " 
 
 " Perhaps," began Eckels, hastily, "Miss Ann 
 might be interested in a big Newfoundland dog I 
 used to know in Paris, Maine. This dog, which 
 was formerly accustomed to attend the Episcopal 
 Church in that town with its owners, is one of the 
 treasured possessions of the Bowman family, now 
 residing in another village. In their present place 
 of residence there is no church of the Episcopal 
 denomination, and Bones, the dog, has often been 
 coaxed to enter the Methodist Church, but has as 
 often refused. One Sunday morning, not long ago, 
 the family was horrified at missing the baby, baby- 
 wagon and all, but was relieved, after hours of har 
 rowing anxiety, by a telegram from Paris : Baby 
 all right.' The dog had risen at night, wrapped the 
 baby up warmly in its carriage, in which it always 
 slept, and, taking the handle bar in his teeth, wheeled 
 it eighteen miles to its old church, where he pre 
 sented it at the altar-rail for baptism. 
 
32 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 " Circumstances and personal taste have com 
 bined," Eckels went on without pausing, as if fear 
 ing an interruption by the big ex-Kentuckian, "to 
 make me something of a connoisseur of dogs. I 
 have known two who could infallibly foretell the 
 weather. One belonged to Asa Ackerson of Man 
 hattan, Kansas. Ackerson valued his dog at $3,500. 
 For twenty-four hours before a rain storm, the ani 
 mal will eat nothing but grass, refusing the most 
 tempting ham and eggs, with milk gravy. Thus 
 Ackerson has not only timely warning of storms 
 himself, but makes a pot of money supplying phono 
 graphic weather warnings to 317 farmers, at twenty- 
 five cents a warn, besides winning a good sum hiring 
 the dog out to do lawn mowing in wet weather. 
 
 " The other dog was the property of Bently Whit 
 man of Topeka, Kansas. Kansas has such a lot of 
 weather that it develops the meteorological faculty 
 in every one. Benjy that's Whitman's dog had 
 only three legs, and was blind of one eye, but he 
 was dearly loved. For twenty hours preceding a 
 rain storm, Benjy carried his tail curled between his 
 legs. When the weather was * set fair,' the tail 
 curled over his back jauntily, and if there was rea 
 son to apprehend high winds or a storm, he used to 
 wag his tail excitedly, and lie near the door of the 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 33 
 
 cyclone cellar. Some miscreant, one night, cut off 
 the dog's eloquent tail. Benjy was overwhelmed 
 with grief, and after a month of repining, during 
 which time a number of disastrous weather changes 
 came unheralded, rinding that he could no longer be 
 of service, he deliberately committed suicide by eat 
 ing a number of railway restaurant sandwiches." 
 
 " Hem ! I" 
 
 Dr. Binninger was visibly expanding beneath the 
 smiles of perverse Miss Ann, and seemed anxious 
 again to claim the attention of the company, but, 
 rising hastily, Mrs. Langdon led the ladies from the 
 room. 
 
 She left behind one honest young heart clouded 
 by profound gloom. She was followed by one young 
 woman, already repentant of her cruelty, but re 
 solved to continue it forever. For such, alas ! is the 
 nature of the sex miscalled, with fine irony, "the 
 gentle," 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 LOVE WILL FIND A WAY ? NO ; INGENUITY ! 
 
 " WHEN I was with Jameson at Krugersdorp " 
 began the returned miner 
 
 " Sh-h ! Not now!" whispered John Eckels, 
 hastily. " You were to tell that story Ladies' Night 
 for Harry Porter's girl, and now the engagement is 
 broken. The devil alone knows what's the matter, 
 and I'm going to find out." 
 
 Probably Eckels didn't mean to imply that he was 
 deep in Satan's confidence ; for presently he had 
 manoeuvred Harry into a dark and quiet corner of 
 the big meeting-room of the Travelers' Club, and 
 was asking how it all came about. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know, John, and I don't much care," 
 said Harry, wearily. I suppose I, like an ass, was 
 angry because she flirted with old Binninger, and 
 then she said she was afraid she'd made a mistake ; 
 that she never could admire mere muscle, but pre 
 ferred the society of men of intellect. Oh, hang it 
 all | You know." 
 
 " She must think a great deal of you ! " said 
 Eckels. 
 
 34 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 35 
 
 " Hell, yes ! heaps ! " said Harry, sardonically. 
 
 " Oh, yes she does ! You don't know women. 
 Nobody does, least of all themselves. I think I 
 know 'em, but it's only because I'm a bachelor and 
 never had any sisters. Oh, yes, she's utterly miser 
 able, and fully persuaded she's happy and sure she . 
 doesn't care for you, yet cherishes, all the while, a ' 
 sneaking expectation that you'll be suing for par 
 don" 
 
 " But she's wholly in the wrong." 
 
 " My God ! Is it so bad as that ! Poor devil ! 
 Then she'll never forgive you never until, that is. 
 Strange creatures, yes. Every girl believes most of 
 the married women she knows are unhappy, yet she 
 is anxious to try the experiment herself, and thinks 
 she isn't. The girl that promises to be a sister to 
 you will be mad as thunder if you make love to an 
 other girl. You might try that. No ? Couldn't ? 
 Well, well ; don't worry because she's refused to 
 marry you ; that shows she intends to do it. You 
 reason by contraries, you know. A woman can al 
 ways forgive a big offense easier than none at all. 
 You must insult her, boy ; scorn her ; make her 
 keep thinking of you, no matter how huffy she gets. 
 Measured by woman's scale, a quarrel and a kiss 
 average up better than indifference. Women are 
 
36 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 heroic in crises. A woman will scream at a mouse, 
 and spank a tiger with her broomstick. Women 
 may average no higher than men in a general round 
 up of all the virtues ; but they're so strong where 
 we're so weak that we think 'em angels. And by 
 George, they are ! " 
 
 11 Didn't know you were so enthusiastic about the 
 sex, Eckels. Isn't usual in an old bachelor like you." 
 
 " Old ? Me ? Why, you libelous young babe- 
 in-arms, you're twenty-six yourself all of you ex 
 cept your intellect and I'm only* thirty-five. I 
 suppose you think I'm a sort of Methuselah because 
 I'm not fat, but you wait ! When you're purring 
 round at fifty years and 250 pounds, I'll still be as 
 slender and graceful as a gay gazelle. No ; I'm a 
 bachelor all right. I've had a hard fight against the 
 world, but things are coming my way now, and I 
 don't mind confessing that I am thinking about be 
 ing your brother-in-law." 
 
 "The flaming locks have fired your old heart, 
 eh ? Congratulations in order ?" 
 
 " Well, not just yet. It will never do to appear 
 in too much of a hurry to close the bargain. Keep 
 'em guessing is my way in theory, you know, in 
 theory. Since you're to be my brother-in-law, I 
 don't mind helping you out a bit. You ought to 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 37 
 
 shine more in conversation. Beat old Binninger at 
 his own game. Confound a widower, anyhow ! 
 Practice some anecdotes beforehand and tell 'em 
 with aplomb. Don't talk to her, but at her. Let 
 her see that others admire you, and she'll be proud 
 of you." 
 
 " You're a good fellow, Eckels," said Harry, 
 cheered in spite of himself by the other's nonsense, 
 "but I can't remember a story, and wouldn't have 
 cheek enough to tell it right if I did." 
 
 " Well, practice a few easy ones. Here, I'll give 
 you some of mine. There's a pretty good tale about 
 a wonderful surgical operation the implanting of 
 a conscience into a traveling soap agent, you know. 
 Let's see : The operation which was performed at 
 the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Dahlonega, 
 involved a dissection of a lesion in the anterior med 
 ullary surface of the unfortunate man's pineal gland, 
 and was so successful that the man, upon recovery, 
 became utterly unfit for his former business, and 
 has had to embark upon newspaper work. That's 
 only the outline, you know ; work up the ghastly 
 details in the dissecting room. Make 'em shiver. 
 Or hold on here's a better one : A serious dimi 
 nution of Western Union Telegraph tolls is one re 
 sult of the establishment of Pete Porter's bicycle 
 
38 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 hen express between Alameda and Oakland that's 
 the way you want to tell it. Work in the long sen 
 tences just as easy as if they came natural to you. 
 
 The towns are practically conterminous, but scatter 
 over a wide area. Porter has a number of very in 
 telligent hens trained to their work, for whom he 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 39 
 
 has fitted up small safety bicycles, scarcely more 
 than toys, weighing about a half pound each. Seated 
 firmly astride of her bike, a hen will, by combining 
 a vigorous flapping of her wings with strong pedal 
 ing* e t U P very rapid motion on the level. On 
 down grades the movement is a combination of ped 
 aling and flying. The towns are districted, and each 
 hen is domesticated in its own district, to which it 
 will return with the utmost speed, bearing whatever 
 message may be intrusted to it, which can then be 
 delivered within the district by hand. One of the 
 bicycle hens thinks nothing, when hurrying, of mak 
 ing seven miles in about five minutes, thirty-seven 
 seconds. Never let a lie come out in exact figures, 
 Harry." 
 
 "Now, see here, Eckels, what's the use of talking 
 nonsense ? I can't remember such a string of lingo 
 as that. Try me on some easy ones, and I'll tell 
 Goldilocks you're a capital fellow." 
 
 " For God's sake, don't ! Hint to her that there 
 is a sad mystery in my past that has blighted ten 
 of the best years of my life. Tell her you've heard 
 I'm the victim of deep-rooted sorrow for a woman 
 unworthy of me. But don't call me a good fellow! " 
 
 "See here, Eckels, get down to the lies." 
 
 "All right. Here's a pencil. Now take notes. 
 
40 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 That's a pretty fair lie -about a gang of laborers, 
 near Nashville, Tennessee, repairing a bridge, when a 
 black and sprawling object loomed suddenly in the 
 sky and plumped down into the water before their 
 eyes. Presently a man's head rose to the surface. 
 They pulled the stranger out, when, puffing and 
 blowing the water from his mouth, he said : * Morn 
 ing, gents ! Rather breezy to-day. Will any of ye 
 be kind enough to tell me how fur I am from Kan 
 sas ?' ' Cyclone ? ' inquired a workman. ' Oh, no ; 
 not a cyclone, exactly ; lived in Kansas ten year 
 and never saw a cyclone ; just a bit of high wind.' 
 " Here's another: A man in Manitowetiwockela- 
 gunticookisametic oh, any old name will do for 
 Maine ; take a day off to put in more syllables 
 has a tame seal, whose intellect has been developed 
 to a remarkable extent. The seal's owner is a salt 
 water fisherman, and always carries the pet with him 
 in his little schooner. Arrived upon the fishing- 
 grounds, the seal slides overboard, and, guided by 
 unerring instinct, locates the schools of fish and 
 leads its master to them by coming to the surface, 
 slapping the water with its tail and emitting short, 
 sharp barks of joy. When the fisherman has secured 
 a load, he heaves to and blows a big dinner horn, 
 and the seal comes aboard for its rations of bread 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 41 
 
 and milk. Then it curls up by its master's side, and 
 goes to sleep in perfect contentment. 
 
 "Something like that is the story about the 
 smuggling steer. Put it down like this : On the 
 Ohio side of Lake Erie, at its widest point, is a de 
 serted strip of shore untended by the Custom-house 
 men, where, until the trick was recently detected, a 
 very curious fraud upon the revenue was carried 
 on by Andy Bogart and his trained steer. It was 
 Andy's custom to go over to Canada, buy a lot of 
 likely young cattle, and drive them with his steer 
 to the lake edge, when the steer would swim 
 across the lake, leading his convoy over. The ruse 
 was discovered by accident, through a lake skip 
 per running upon a fine herd in transit. At first 
 he thought it a shoal of new-fangled horned por 
 poises, but when he discovered the truth he gave 
 information to the officials at Cleveland. You 
 could put some very fine descriptive touches into 
 that." 
 
 "No, I couldn't either Jack, and you know it. 
 I could learn it like a recitation, but I get so blamed 
 red in the face." 
 
 "I- see. Got to have 'em shorter. Kind of 
 thrown off careless, like. Try a highly condensed 
 lie, delivered in a bored and languid tone. This 
 
42 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 way : ' Ya-as, like the gas tree aw down West 
 Virginia, you know ; soil so aw impregnated with 
 gas they set fire to trees, and aw light up sur 
 rounding scenery aw so that bees can work all 
 summer twenty-four hours a day, preparing for the 
 night that never aw comes.' There's a good short 
 lie about rats in the mines stealing the miners' lamp 
 oil by dipping their tails in it and licking them. 
 Let's see ; how did they unscrew the cover ? Oh, I 
 remember: the biggest rat grabbed it in his teeth 
 and the others took his legs and swung him round 
 like a capstan bar see till the cover came off. 
 Story of a naughty dog locked in house ; gets um 
 brella ; goes up to roof ; holds handle in mouth ; 
 jumps off ; parachute descent and consequent for 
 giveness. Story of 
 
 " Hold on ! Hold on ! " cried Harry. Eckels 
 was gesticulating rapidly, his thin face having passed 
 from half jest to wholly earnest. 
 
 "I shouldn't wonder, though," said Eckels, " if 
 aphorisms were more in your line. A touch of cyn 
 icism goes well with women ; makes 'em think you're 
 a sad dog and have lived and suffered ; then they 
 want to comfort you and make your paths all peace; 
 only they wouldn't be, you know. Something like 
 this : ' One's enemies pity him when he fails ; his 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 43 
 
 friends blame him ; his family forgives him after 
 many years.' ' 
 
 " I could do that better," said Harry, judicially. 
 1 'It's shorter, and any fool thing seems to answer 
 for an aphorism. If a dollar bill is the square root 
 of all evil, a gold brick is its cube root. If wishes 
 were horses, and were also father to the thought, 
 then the thought would be a colt. Mountains have 
 to keep pretty still because they are confined in 
 mountain chains. A fiddle is masculine because 
 the most successful appeal is always made to its 
 stomach." 
 
 " Oh, you young idiot ! You'd spoil it all. You 
 should be the cynic, not the clown, to impress 
 women, especially a goose of a girl. I give you up. 
 No, by Jove ! I have it !" said Eckels, jumping to 
 his feet. " Will you trust yourself absolutely to 
 me, upon a positive guarantee that my plan will 
 restore you to happiness ? " 
 
 " Yes, I'll do that. Probably your scheme is a 
 foolish one, but in Jove the most foolish thing is 
 wisest." 
 
 " Good boy ! That was an aphorism worthy of 
 one whose name modesty forbids me to utter. Talk 
 like that but not to your dear one to other 
 women. For my first command is that you make 
 
44 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 no effort to see or speak to Ann Copeland until I 
 give you leave, save the most ordinary courtesies 
 when you meet by accident. Mind, now ; not one 
 word about love or sentiment, and appear as jolly as 
 a lark. Trust me. I'll see you through all right." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LOVE LAUGHS AT LIES. 
 
 ECKELS had made the acquaintance of Parker 
 Adams at his boarding-house, and had secured his 
 election as a member of the Travelers' Club, on the 
 representation that Adams was himself something 
 of a concocter of travelers' tales. 
 
 A burst of laughter from the group at the fireside 
 proved that Adams was triumphantly standing his 
 initiation. As Eckels and Harry Porter neared the 
 group, he was talking about chickens. 
 
 "The hen," said the pudgy little fellow, on whose 
 bearded face rested a look of deep gravity, "has 
 wonderful vitality, and is for this reason capable 
 of undergoing strange surgical experiments. At the 
 boarding-house where Eckels and I are staying, we 
 have an especial breed of four-legged chickens from 
 the farm of Ex-Gov. McCarty, of New Jersey, who 
 is an enthusiastic fancier. The first quadrupedal 
 chick McCarty ever developed, by grafting the ad 
 ditional members, is alive yet, and is a methodical 
 old bird. It uses only one pair of legs at a time, 
 curling the spare set up under its body like a stork. 
 Every half hour this rooster changes legs, and such 
 45 
 
46 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 is the unerring accuracy with which this operation is 
 timed that the crew on an accommodation train, 
 which stops at a station near by, are accustomed to 
 set their watches by the four- legged fowl's change- 
 off. 
 
 " I have a friend in Rome, Georgia," Adams went 
 on, "who conceived an idea fraught with woe to 
 his snake neighbors. He selected for the experi 
 ment a chick that had been half swallowed by a 
 snake when very young, and had lost one leg in the 
 melee. For this valuable fowl my friend rigged up 
 a wooden leg. Ever since then the bird has taken 
 revenge on snakedom. Its method, when it sees one 
 of its enemies, is to advance the wooden leg 
 cautiously. The snake bites into it, and is unable 
 to release its fangs before the chicken picks its eyes 
 out. The rest is easy. The wooden leg has to be 
 renewed twice a week, it gets splintered up so badly. 
 " Another instance of the vitality of the hen," 
 continued the new member, "was brought to my 
 notice while I was fishing in Maine last year. A 
 farmer, one year previously, had accidentally over 
 turned a water-bucket, imprisoning a hen beneath 
 it. A lot of hay was subsequently piled upon the 
 pail, as the barn was filled, and it was only removed 
 a year later. As the hired man lifted the pail, the 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 47 
 
 hen ran away, rather groggily, but defiant, sounding 
 her alarm. She had not been idle during her long 
 imprisonment without food or air, but had laid nearly 
 a bushel and a half of eggs, the sort known as 
 ' Stage Elevator Ds.' " 
 
 "A most interesting occurrence ! " said Tom 
 Fenton, his keen black eyes sparkling. " I think 
 that we have reason to congratulate ourselves upon 
 our new member. He will be an honor to the Liars' 
 Club, to give our organization its popular name. I 
 will now, with your permission, relate two or three 
 little instances which go to prove alike the folly and 
 the faithful devotion of hens to their duty. One case 
 is that of Harry Tyrwhitt, a shrewd farmer of Acco- 
 mac, Maryland. This gentleman, in order to induce 
 greater activity of laying among his 120 hens, has 
 formed a championship club league of twelve clubs, 
 each club containing ten hens. Match lays are laid 
 by the clubs, two by two in rotation, and the score 
 of each club, from the first to the last day of the sea 
 son, is kept with the utmost accuracy. Under the 
 wholesome spur of emulation there are never any 
 goose eggs. 
 
 " Of course, the strain of this competition is tough 
 on the hens, but nothing like so cruel, after all, as 
 the course pursued by a hen-farmer I used to know 
 
48 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 in Scanderby, Michigan. In spite of the hard times, 
 this man has been gaining wealth so rapidly by the 
 sale of an enormous number of eggs, without any 
 visible supply of hens to account for them, as to sug 
 gest to his neighbors the idea of witchcraft. A com 
 mittee visited his barn one rainy night, and there 
 discovered that he had built a dark room, wherein 
 were impounded twenty-six weary, pallid hens. The 
 walls were painted to imitate green fields and run 
 ning brooks. A powerful electric light shone for 
 half an hour, and then for an equal time all was 
 dark. The hens under this treatment had lost their 
 reckoning, and were producing each twenty-four 
 eggs per day." 
 
 "I must take issue with you, however, on the 
 subject of the hen's intellect," said the new mem 
 ber, stroking his short, pointed beard. "Probably you 
 know that in Ashaway, Rhode Island, reside a great 
 number of Seventh-day Baptists, who are all very 
 good people and religious almost to a fault. Among 
 their other peculiarities is the possession of a special 
 breed of hens, carefully trained to lay eggs every 
 day of the week but Saturday. One of these hens 
 was recently sold to a new owner in Chepachet, 
 whose other fowl were irreligiously accustomed to 
 lay eggs on all days of the week. The new-comer, 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 49 
 
 upon fully realizing the character of her associates, 
 began destroying the works of the devil, by breaking 
 with her beak every egg laid on Saturday. This 
 practice soon rendered the pious hen so unpopular 
 with the farmer's wife that she met the fate of a true 
 reformer, and lost her head. You will hardly dis 
 pute the statement that this hen proved herself the 
 possessor of a high order of intellect, as well as a 
 thoroughly developed moral sense." 
 
 " To be beautiful is the most useful thing a woman 
 can accomplish," said Harry Porter, unconsciously 
 speaking aloud an aphorism he had been busily 
 concocting for the past hour or so. Then, catching 
 the wondering looks of his companions, he was silent 
 again. 
 
 " Hem ! As the subject has been somewhat 
 abruptly changed by our young friend," said Dr. 
 Binninger, " I think I will tell of a peculiarity of 
 Southwestern Missouri. The soil of that section, as 
 you doubtless know, is so strongly impregnated with 
 iron that it produces a peculiar effect upon pigs. It 
 doesn't injuriously attack their hoofs, but turns 
 their nostrils into iron, so that double-barreled 
 Fourth of July salutes can be fired from them with 
 out inconvenience to the pig. 
 
 " My very good friend Boanerges Smith, with 
 
5O THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 whom I was once staying, had a pig whose tail he 
 had neglected to cut off, according to the usual cus 
 tom of the country. In time the iron of the soil 
 collected upon the pig's tail in a hard and heavy 
 mass, which could not be got off except by smelting, 
 and that painful process would have scorched the 
 pig's coat tails. The constant strain on the animal's 
 eyes, due to its inability to wink because of the 
 weight of the tail drawing its skin back, produced 
 partial blindness. Smith provided a pair of blue 
 spectacles and endeavored to induce the pig to wear 
 them, but the maddened animal would insist on paw 
 ing them off. 
 
 " At last my friend resolved to do that which he 
 should have done at first, and cut off the animal's 
 tail. But it was too late. The pig, relieved from 
 the load which had so long cumbered it, testified to 
 its joy by capering about. But a new difficulty 
 arose. The hind legs, by carrying such a weight, 
 had grown so much stronger than the fore legs, and 
 outran them so far and fast, that the pig went round 
 and round in a narrowing circle." 
 
 .Here Dr. Binninger paused, and began leisurely 
 puffing at his cigar. 
 
 " But what became of the pig ? " asked Porter. 
 
 " If the club will excuse me, I'd rather not tell. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 5 1 
 
 It seems to me that even the uncompleted narrative 
 has a certain modicum of scientific interest," said 
 the doctor, and to all urging he remained obdurate. 
 
 " The voracious appetite of pigs is one of the most 
 wonderful of their many admirable qualities," said 
 Fenton, after a pause. " Sometimes this gets a pig 
 into trouble. It was in Osgood, Indiana, that Killian 
 Dopp's pig got into a hardware store and ate a lot 
 of nitro-glycerine. Happening afterward into Raw's 
 livery a horse kicked poor piggy. The stable 
 was only slightly damaged, but the pig was blown to 
 fragments, and some of its bristles were driven 
 through a three-inch oak plank ; and the atmosphere 
 for miles around was so greased with lard that it 
 slipped into a cyclone. In the South I used to see 
 sometimes a racing pig belonging to Bud Davis, of 
 Mobile. It is an eighth wonder. This pig, which 
 is kept lean and in good condition by a diet of pick 
 led olives and lean beef, with celery and coleslaw as 
 side dishes, will drag a tiny sulky at a 2.40 pace. 
 The only difficulty with him is that whenever you 
 wish him to go east you have to start him north 
 west by the compass." 
 
 " In the face of such instances, what a mockery is 
 the fancied superiority of man ! " mused Eckels. 
 "A man has little eyes to see with, middle-sized 
 
52 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 arms to work with, and great big legs to gad about 
 on. He gets most honor when he is least a man ; 
 when he has become short-sighted, fat, scant of 
 breath, bald, timid, feeble and a fool. I like better 
 to think of primal man, of the Aborigine. Such 
 thoughts were forcibly borne in upon me by the 
 recent discovery, in Bucyrus, Ohio, of a tomahawk 
 buried deep in the heart of a giant tree. This imple 
 ment differs in form from any now known, and has 
 deeply graven in its handle * H. to M., B. c. 1317.' 
 It is supposed to have been given in the year named 
 by Hiawatha to Minnehaha, upon whose fair young 
 life the gift of an edge tool naturally cast the dark 
 shadow of an unappeasable hoodoo." 
 
 "A curiously similar incident," said the new mem 
 ber, " recently came to light in a Virginia forest, when 
 a very large tree was cut down, near the heart of 
 which was found a lock of hair, or rather two, inter 
 twined, of darker and lighter meshes. By carefully 
 splitting the wood, the initials * I. S.' and * P. P.' 
 were discovered, faintly legible, in what must have 
 been the bark several hundred years ago. By care 
 fully counting the rings which covered the initials, 
 they were found to support the theory that the mys 
 tic letters stand for * I-o-h-n,' or John Smith,' and 
 * Pocahontas Powhatan/ whose locks of hair had been, 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 53 
 
 in some romantic mood, intrusted to the keeping of 
 the cleft bark. Smith, you know, was one of these 
 light-complected cusses, and Miss Powhatan was, 
 of course, an equally pronounced brunette." 
 
 "The starry heavens and the mind of man," re 
 sumed Eckels, " won Kant's wonder. But Kant was 
 a man. I, myself, most admire animals when they 
 imitate the ingenuity of man, and become thereby 
 less like their own noble simplicity. I was once, 
 while in Central Africa with de Brazza, immensely 
 amused -by seeing, near the Congo, a party of mon 
 keys listening to a simian visitor with a brass collar, 
 evidently an escaped pet. Presently all sprang up 
 and, chattering about the explanation, began to play 
 'keeping store.' The other monkeys brought bana 
 nas and cocoanuts to the brass-collared one, who 
 gravely paid for each purchase with a pebble. Then 
 the monkeys wished to buy their goods back for the 
 same pebbles. The ringed monkey had failed, or 
 the money was no longer legal tender. At any rate 
 the refund was refused. There was a whispered 
 consultation, and the merchant, all at once, found 
 himself kicking at the end of a Molopea Kalostoma 
 vine thrust through his collar. It was a first rate 
 example of the rude justice of lynch law." 
 
 " The fact that even insects are not altogether 
 
54 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 without rules of concerted action," said Dr. Binnin- 
 ger, " has been noted by Lubbock and other scien 
 tific observers. The other evening in Waycross, 
 Georgia, along line of lights was seen flying across 
 a low, swampy piece of ground. Some curious ob 
 servers drew quietly near, and saw that it was a pro 
 cession of lightning-bugs, proceeding in orderly 
 fashion by fours front, and with the proper interval. 
 Their combined light was sufficient to make their 
 motions perfectly visible. After passing through 
 all the principal streets of the swamp, the procession 
 halted in a clump of alder bushes, where a commit 
 tee was hard at work preparing a collation. A giant 
 lightning-bug sat on a mullen leaf, and as 'each pla 
 toon passed him the paraders flashed their lights 
 three times in quick succession as a salute, the big 
 lightning-bug flashing once in reply. After all had 
 passed the collation of sorrel leaves was served. It 
 was the opinion of the observers that the lightning- 
 bugs were holding a ratification meeting in honor of 
 their ruler for the season." 
 
 " A friend of mine in Colorado, a member of a 
 local club, vouches for the truth of this incident," 
 continued the Doctor. u Two hunters, coming to 
 the edge of a glade, saw sixty-five bears in consulta 
 tion. One was lying bound with grapevines, two 
 
56 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 were watching over him, and another, a big fellow, 
 was making a speech. Presently the big bear stop 
 ped talking, and all the sixty-three growled an as 
 sent. It sounded, my friend writes, like the mutter 
 ing of distant thunder. The last sad act soon 
 followed. Some of the bears threw a grapevine- 
 loop about the erring bear's neck, led him to a limb, 
 threw the vine over it, and six big bears walked 
 away with it. In ten minutes the bear was dead, 
 and the others went solemnly away. The hunters 
 secured the lynched bear's skin without a bullet-hole 
 in it, by way of proof." 
 
 " Was it ever known what the bear's offense was ?" 
 queried Fenton, who stood in his favorite attitude, 
 both hands in his trousers-pockets, and his head 
 thrown well back. 
 
 " No, but it is supposed that the erring bear had 
 ventured the hasty opinion that honey belonged to 
 the bees who made it an opinion, as all must per 
 ceive, utterly subversive of morality and good gov 
 ernment." 
 
 " The cat," said Eckels, " though seldom imita 
 tive of man, or influenced by devotion to him, often 
 evinces reasoning faculties of a high order. Yet, 
 however far toward reason, the instinct of cats may 
 carry them, there is apt to be a flaw in the chain 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 57 
 
 when they endeavor to measure and forecast the 
 probable actions of human beings. Like the cat in 
 Biddeford, Maine, whose owners recently removed 
 from one house to another more commodious. 
 Kitty was ill at ease, because she loved the old 
 home, but no one attributed to her two or three 
 mysterious fires which occurred in the new house, 
 and were successively extinguished, until one day 
 she was seen to leap upon the kitchen table, stretch 
 up, and take a match from the tin match-box on the 
 wall, and sneak away with it. She was followed, 
 and carefully watched, so as not to excite her sus 
 picion. First, she prepared a soft wad of old news 
 papers under the cellar stairs; she rubbed the match 
 on the cement floor until it was in flames. Care 
 fully pussy touched it to the paper, and the bright 
 flames shot up, only to be again extinguished. 
 Pussy was, after this exploit, killed, but with many 
 regrets, for the family realized that her act was not 
 malicious, but was intended merely to force them 
 back into their old home by destroying the new." 
 
 "I think/' said Dr. Binninger, " that the time has 
 come to retire, for me, at least; and I, therefore, 
 wish you, gentlemen, a very good night." 
 
 As the big doctor was leaving the room, the new 
 waiter, Henry, nervously touched his arm. Henry 
 
58 /THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 was a light mulatto, with a very earnest face, now 
 tense with excitement. As the other members, one 
 by one, drifted out of the room, he said : " 'Scuse 
 me, suh, but would yo* be kin' enough to tell me, 
 sun, wut become ob de ossifer pig ? " 
 
 " The ossified pig ? Certainly, George, certainly. 
 I am always glad to see one in your station of life 
 eager to absorb scientific knowledge. I may say 
 that I refrained from concluding the tale in open 
 meeting, only because I feared that some of the 
 members might assume an expression of incredulity; 
 and that, as you know, a Southern gentleman of the 
 old school could not tamely endure. The ossified 
 pig, you'll remember, Charles, was left whirling 
 about in its joy at its release from an incumbrance, 
 and rotating more rapidly because of the greater 
 strength of its hind legs outrunning the fore legs. 
 Faster it sped; .smaller grew the circuit of its revo 
 lution. Presently blue smoke began to arise from 
 the no longer distinguishable mass of revolving 
 flesh. Centripetal attraction was proving too strong. 
 There was a sudden flash, or report, an exquisite 
 scent of roasting meat and the unfortunate pig had 
 vanished into thin air." 
 
 With a howl of anguish, the new waiter fled from 
 the room. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 59 
 
 He tore up the stairs to a sort of loft he inhab 
 ited, with the club's other employes, and began hast 
 ily throwing his few belongings into his carpet-bag, 
 and as he worked, he moaned, " Oh, wha' fo' dis 
 niggah make sich a fool quesh'rt ? Oh, Lordy, 
 Lordy, don' let 'im git me ! Don' let 'im git me ! ' 
 
 " Wonder what ails that boy^! " thought Dr. Bm- 
 ninger, as he slowly left the room. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 IN WHICH A VISITOR LEARNS SOMETHING OF THE 
 COUNTRY. 
 
 " DEAH me, what extwao'dinawy cold weather ! " 
 said the English visitor, after he had been duly 
 introduced, and had drawn his chair close to the fire. 
 
 " We have, indeed, a variable climate," said John 
 Eckels, " but you hardly get a fair sample here in 
 New York; still, even here, during the '88 blizzard, 
 a mouse crawled into my bed to keep from freezing, 
 but wasn't quite quick enough; the last hind leg 
 mousie pulled in, was nipped solid by the frost. Next 
 morning the mouse ran and crouched over the reg 
 ister, and I then noticed that it had been turned en 
 tirely white by its awful experience; all except the 
 frozen leg, which was black. 
 
 " During the same frightful storm, a Mrs. Alvan 
 Learby, of Port Jefferson, was doing her washing. 
 The room was, as is usual on such occasions, full 
 of steam, and when Mrs. Learby 's little boy, Jake, 
 came running in, leaving the door wide open, the 
 inrushing cold air condensed the steam into snow, 
 which fell like an avalanche upon poor Mrs. Learby, 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 61 
 
 completely burying her from sight. But Jake, by a 
 desperate effort, succeeded in digging her out with 
 a coal-scoop before death ensued from suffocation." 
 
 " Fawncy ! " ejaculated the visitor. 
 
 " At about the same time," went on Eckels, gravely, 
 " a man was going up Broadway, carrying a good- 
 sized jag " 
 
 " W-W-Wait a minute ! " said his lordship, stam 
 mering in his anxiety, and 
 tugging a big notebook out 
 of his breast pocket. He 
 was an angular man, with 
 longish mutton-chop whis 
 kers, a placid stare, and a 
 monocle. Probably under 
 the impression that to wear 
 a dress suit would have 
 been displaying too much 
 solicitude for his appear 
 ance in an assembly likely 
 to be uncouth in its attire, 
 he wore shabby checks of 
 very loud pattern. Jim Hart had brought him, and 
 it was his first day in the country. 
 
 When the noble criticbf our customs had secured 
 his notebook and pencil, he said: " Mind my taking 
 
62 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 notes ? Want to put down ' jag means umbwella,' 
 before I forget it. How vewy owiginal ! Thanks, 
 my deah fellow ! By the way, * jag ' does mean 
 ' umbwella,' doesn't it ? " 
 
 "Oh, of course," said Eckels. " Yes, < jag ' 
 does mean something to keep water out. I have 
 forgotten what I was about to say, but as Mr. Hart 
 tells me you are gathering material for a book, 
 I will tell you about the effect extreme cold has on 
 some of our species of snakes. Doesn't kill 'em; 
 merely renders 'em lethargic. Out in Colorado, for 
 instance, a Cincinnati man was building a sawmill 
 in freezing weather, and having occasion to turn out 
 a bar five feet long, ran out and got a long stick for 
 the purpose. He cut off the small end to the right 
 length, and put it on the lathe, when it began to thaw 
 out, and proved to be a mighty big rattlesnake, re 
 cently deprived of its tail. But he never lost his 
 presence of mind. Before the snake could coil for 
 a spring, he plunged it in a tub of ice-cold water, 
 after which it was easily despatched." 
 
 " Fawncy ! " said the visitor, still diligently writ 
 ing, when he was not engaged in replacing his mon 
 ocle to gaze at his informant. 
 
 " Yes, indeed," said Tom Fenton. "It is well 
 known that snakes are frequently found in cold 
 
THE. BOOK OF LIES. 63 
 
 weather, frozen stiff, and so brittle that they can be 
 broken like dry sticks. A snake so broken will re 
 join himself as soon as warm weather thaws him out. 
 Tom Norton, of Altoona, a few years ago, when I 
 was living there, broke up several snakes, and piled 
 up about half a cord, in stove lengths, of rattlers, 
 moccasins, and garter snakes. A sudden thaw sent 
 them hunting up their lost lengths, which all suc 
 ceeded in finding but two, a big rattler head, in the 
 confusion, joining a black-snake body, which, of 
 course, left nothing for the black-snake head and 
 rattler tail but to follow the example. Then followed 
 a strange scene. The rattler body persisted in coil 
 ing up for a spring, when its black-snake head was 
 unused to that method of fighting, and the rattler 
 head and black-snake body were equally at odds ; 
 so that neither combination could harm the other, 
 though both were very angry. Finally the rattler- 
 headed combination marched to the creek and com 
 mitted suicide. The black-snake head would have 
 followed the example, but the coiled body refused 
 to move, and the composite snake soon died of a 
 broken heart." 
 
 " To meddle with snakes while in this lethargic 
 condition is very dangerous," said Dr. Binninger. 
 " In the Punxsutawney Mountains a farmer, named 
 
64 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 Morris, once found a den of sixty-seven rattle 
 snakes, all rendered torpid, so that they could be 
 handled with little danger. He prepared a big box, 
 with holes in the sides for ventilation, corded the 
 snakes up in it, and with his ox sled hauled it to a 
 warm place. His intention was to sell the snakes 
 for museum purposes, but when they awoke in their 
 narrow quarters a terrific fight ensued, in which 
 sixty-six of the snakes were killed, and the remain 
 ing one so crazed by pain, that he committed suicide 
 by striking his fangs deep into his own body." 
 
 " Fawncy ! " said the visitor, still writing. 
 
 " Cold weather produces some marvelous effects 
 in states usually considered warm," continued the 
 Southerner. " In the cattle belt of Texas a great 
 herd gathered upon a railroad track at a point near 
 Sherman, one very cold day last winter, and com 
 pelled the engineer of a freight to halt for fear of 
 being ditched. After a fierce struggle, during which 
 they used their long horns on each other with telling 
 effect, the cattle huddled about the warm boiler to 
 protect themselves against the cold, which was 
 severe, until the fireman, as a last resort, drew the 
 fire. After the cattle had deserted the fast-cooling 
 boiler in disgust, he fired up again, and the train 
 proceeded." 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 65 
 
 " I suppose bears hibernate," said the visitor, 
 pausing for a reply, with poised pencil. " I am very 
 much interested in bears." 
 
 " Hem ! " said the doctor, "that bears frequently 
 hibernate is true. That they always do so, may be 
 disputed, in view of the experience of my friend, 
 Maitland Brown, of Athlone, Oregon, who met a fierce 
 grizzly prowling about the mountain, on one of the 
 bitterest cold days of the winter of '78. The rav 
 enous animal would undoubtedly have made a meal 
 of Brown, who was unarmed, had he not retained 
 presence of mind sufficient to spit deliberately, first 
 in one and then the other of the animal's eyes. So 
 extreme was the cold that they instantly froze shut, 
 and the poor beast was like a blinded Samson. 
 Brown then threw snow in the animal's mouth until, 
 first melting and then freezing, the expansive power 
 of the ice pried his great jaws apart, and the bear 
 died where he lay." 
 
 " Fawncy ! Such presence of mind ! " ejaculated 
 the visitor in amazement. " Bears must be very 
 dangerous creatures, I judge." 
 
 " Troublesome rather than dangerous," said 
 Eckels, " as a rule. I once knew a farmer who 
 suffered severe loss because of the desperation 
 caused among the animals living near him by cold 
 
66 
 
 THE BOOK OF LIES 1 . 
 
 weather. 
 
 His house stands in a lonely spot, and he 
 attributes to this fact his 
 recent loss of a lot of farm 
 stock. He had locked 
 
 L up his barn securely, but 
 
 j 1 had omitted to fasten 
 
 a second - story window, 
 and during the night, 
 three bears of assorted 
 sizes, after trying all the 
 other windows and doors, 
 cast longing eyes at this. 
 So the middle-sized bear 
 climbed on the big bear's 
 back, and the little bear, 
 upon the middle-sized one, 
 was just able to reach 
 the window and open it. 
 Then he went down stairs, 
 unhooked the door, and 
 the whole bear family came 
 in, and ate, uninterrupted, 
 veal and potatoes. When 
 my friend, the farmer, 
 came in the morning he 
 noticed that the bears were 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 67 
 
 of polite ways, as they had used a number of empty 
 grain bags for napkins, and a bran-mash tub for a 
 finger-bowl." 
 
 " Hem ! " said Dr. Binninger. "The longer -one 
 lives and the more one learns,the better he realizes the 
 truth of the central idea of Darwinism the theory of 
 modification by use and environment. Since the cold 
 storage method of preserving eggs began to be prac 
 ticed in New York, large polar rats, covered with very 
 thick fur, have gradually come to inhabit the ware 
 houses, making a living by gnawing the eggs. That 
 these rats are not a special breed, but a variant from 
 the ordinary species, is highly probable. Certain it is 
 that an ordinary domestic cat, which has been play 
 ing about one of the warehouses for some years, has 
 become so inured to the cold that she prefers the 
 freezing air of the vaults to the outer sunshine. 
 And just as the usual cat curls up to a grate or 
 register in winter, this extraordinary animal, after a 
 short run out-of-doors in summer, will return, with 
 every sign of discomfort, to her vaults, and cuddle 
 close to the genial surface of a block of ice. Her 
 hair has grown very thick and long, and her appetite 
 for cold-storage rats is voracious in the extreme." 
 
 'When I was with Jameson at Krugersdorp 
 began the returned miner 
 
68 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 Just at this moment a diversion was created by 
 Harry Porter dashing into the room, with a queer, 
 strained expression in his eyes, and a generally un 
 cared-for look. 
 
 " Here, Eckels," he said, taking no notice of the 
 others. " Can I speak with you just a moment ? " 
 
 " See here, old man," he added, dropping his voice 
 as the two moved away from the others, " I came 
 to take back my promise. I must see her ; I am 
 desperate." 
 
 " How about her ? " asked Eckels. 
 
 " Oh, her ! She's happy enough, I guess. Gay 
 as a lark. Flirting desperately with fellows that ' 
 
 " Good !" said Eckels. " The scheme is working 
 splendidly. My boy, she is pining for you ! Just 
 you keep a stiff upper lip, and trust to me. I know 
 something about women, I guess. Just look at^me ! 
 I'm as much in love as you are, and going to be 
 your brother-in-law. Do you see me going around 
 with my necktie on crooked and a * who-kicked-me ? ' 
 look in my beautiful brown eyes ? Not much ! I'm 
 here listening to yarns and letting her do the worry 
 ing. By the way, Hart brought in an English lord 
 or something, and they're giving him points for his 
 book on America. It's great ! Come over and 
 hear them. Do you good," 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 69 
 
 When the dissimilar pair of lovers reached the 
 fireside group, Dr. Binninger was giving the dra 
 matic conclusion of a tale about a monster flight of 
 locusts, a dash of rain cloud, and a cold wave getting 
 mixed up in the atmosphere above Harlem, and the 
 resultant hailstorm, whereof each crystal-clear stone 
 had imbedded in its heart a prisoned locust. 
 
 "Just fawncy ! " said his lordship. "I never 
 knew such stohms weah common heah ! " 
 
 Then before the startled eyes of the travelers a 
 marvel grew. The. visitor pocketed his monocle, 
 shut his notebook with a bang, smoothed the look 
 of vacuous imbecility out of his face, and became 
 at once as much a business man as any of them. 
 " Thank you, gentlemen," he said. " My friend 
 Hart gave me to understand that you could tell me 
 something about cold weather, and I have been 
 most interested, but I have myself seen, in the 
 Canadian dominions of Her Gracious Majesty, 
 Queen Victoria God bless her ! something sur 
 passing anything you have told me. I was riding, 
 one intensely cold night, on a Canadian Pacific 
 railway train, between Caribou and Musquash 
 stations, when all at once a tremendous crash oc 
 curred, and we found our train split into kindling 
 wood and piled up all around the station of Mus-* 
 
70 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 quash, which was very convenient, as we burned 
 most of the wreck before morning in the station 
 stove to keep from freezing." 
 
 " How did it happen ? " asked Hart, while the 
 other men in the group stole uneasy glances at 
 each other. 
 
 " The engineer miscalculated the distance," said 
 the visitor, his crisp utterance contrasting strangely 
 with his assumed drawl a moment earlier. " It was 
 thirty-five miles between stations. He was ac 
 customed to stop before reaching Musquash, and 
 back onto a side track to let a long freight pass. 
 But on this night the cold shrunk the rails of the 
 track so much, and they were so firmly plated to 
 gether, that they drew the two towns a mile and a 
 quarter nearer together, and the engineer, mistaking 
 the distance, crashed into the waiting freight. 
 
 " Why, up there I knew a man killed by his best 
 friend, in a fight over a dog," continued his lord 
 ship, with a glance at the stupefied face of Dr. 
 Binninger. The visitor and Hart were apparently 
 the only men in the room enjoying themselves. 
 
 " After he knew the facts, the survivor was simply 
 crazed with grief at what he'd done. The dead man 
 had owned a magnificent Newfoundland, and ac 
 cused the other of stealing it. The accused man 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 71 
 
 didn't think it worth while to mention, until after 
 the fight, that he had rescued from the cold and 
 taken home a tiny pup about seven inches long, of 
 breed unknown to him. When he returned home he 
 found in his shack the lost Newfoundland, and 
 didn't at all understand the situation until I sug 
 gested to him that the Newfoundland and the tiny 
 pup were the same animal, and that the extreme 
 cold had shrunk the magnificent creature, about 
 whom the quarrel occurred, to the mean dimensions 
 of the little animal he had picked up in the snow." 
 
 There was silence for a moment, none of the 
 members thinking of anything to say which would 
 be adequate to the occasion. Finally Eckels 
 changed the subject : " Dr. Binninger, what did 
 you say to that new waiter the other night ? The 
 steward tells me that Henry ran upstairs in a perfect 
 panic of terror, threw all of his clothes that he could 
 get hold of, without too much difficulty, into a grip, 
 and ran away, and has never been seen since. He 
 didn't steal anything. He even left some of his 
 own property, to wit: one large bone collar button, 
 four razors, a concertina, a set of bones, and a plug 
 hat. He seemed as if in terror of his life, and has 
 vanished as completely as if the earth had swal 
 lowed him." 
 
72 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 " I didn't say a thing to him," protested the vir 
 tuous doctor; "not a thing. The unfortunate youth 
 merely stopped me at the door to ask some trifling, 
 unimportant question. I myself noticed the ex 
 treme agitation of which you speak, but am entirely 
 at a loss to account for it. However, if the mem 
 bers think that I am in any way responsible for 
 the poor boy's disappearance, I will endeavor to look 
 him up and report on the matter. A Southern 
 gentleman of the old school, suh, never deserts a 
 poor colored boy in misfortune." 
 
 " Think ought state," said Hart, in his queer, jerky 
 way, " took privilege of Travelers' Club, introduc 
 ing my friend as English lord. No lord at all. 
 Just plain Canadian lumberman, Donald Fraser of 
 Assiniboia. Gentlemen, again let me introduce my 
 Canadian friend, Mr. Fraser." 
 
 The customary murmur of recognition went along 
 the circle, and Mr. Fraser, who alone seemed to 
 have the power of speech left him, bowed low, and 
 said in his mellowest tones: "I am sure I am 
 pleased to thank you all, gentlemen, and to express 
 my satisfaction at having spent a most enjoyable 
 evening." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MARCH GALES AND OTHERS. 
 
 " Wow ! " said Jim Hart, stamping his feet as he 
 banged the door of the Travelers' Club behind him. 
 " Worst March gale ever I saw. Curious how it 
 catches moving vans. On my way here, saw two of 
 'em, great big fellows, poking along street, kind o' 
 careful like, when biff ! came little harder gust than 
 usual, caught hind wagon, keeled it right over first 
 one. Then first one left behind; wind keeled it over 
 other. Away they went up street, first one, then 
 other, like boys a-playing leapfrog. Never saw any 
 one in life so scared as drivers were. Both of 'em 
 jumped out when felt old ark begin to hump up. 
 There they stood on sidewalk hopping up 'n' down, 
 V yelling. Wasn't anything else they could do, of 
 course, but " 
 
 " Horses killed, I suppose ? " said Dr. Binninger, 
 as Hart struggled with his overcoat and rubbers. 
 
 <( Nope. Never touched 'em. When wagons 
 jumped, they snapped traces, 'n' each time wagon 
 came down, it fell kind of slanting, rolling over 
 other, 'n' hit ground far enough ahead miss horses. 
 
 73 
 
74 THE BOOK OF LIES, 
 
 After two or three narrow escapes, they scooted out 
 sidewise, ran away. Furniture must have been 
 little mixed up inside, though; last I saw of wagons, 
 ' God Bless Our Home ' motto sticking up over door 
 of one of 'em, just natural as boarding-house." 
 
 "Yes," said Parker Adams, " it is a pretty lively 
 storm for the city, but of course nothing to what 
 you see sometimes out in the open prairie, where 
 there's nothing to break the force of the wind. I 
 remember being on a slow passenger train in Kansas, 
 at one time, when a gale came up behind, and began 
 to shove us along the track like mad. In a single 
 minute, during which we passed by actual count 713 
 telegraph poles, ten rods apart, the axles heated and 
 swelled, and the wheels stuck fast, and began sliding 
 along the rails without turning. Then the wheels 
 and rails alike were transformed in an instant to 
 glowing masses of red-hot metal by the tremendous 
 friction, and the cars would certainly have been set 
 on fire, adding new horrors to the situation, if the 
 engineer, with rare presence of mind, hadn't let 
 down his water scoop as we came to a trough. The 
 water splashed sidewise upon the red-hot metal, 
 cooling it in an instant, and, as it cooled, welding 
 the wheels to the rail, as well as each rail end to end 
 with the next for several rods. The running gear 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 75 
 
 stopped at once dead still, firm as the everlasting 
 hills, but of course the car bodies, going at such a 
 rate, slid right along off the trucks. It all hap 
 pened in a minute, but Lord I Wasn't I scared !" 
 
 " There must have been a calamity when the cars 
 descended," exclaimed the ex-Kentuckian,Binninger, 
 who was mixing some things in a big glass bowl. 
 
 " No ; not a bit of it ! You see, when the water 
 from the scoop struck the red-hot rails and wheels, a 
 tremendous mass of steam was generated. We were 
 in a cutting at the time, and the steam blew us out 
 of it like a cork out of a bottle, throwing us only 
 a few feet above the natural level of the land. The 
 wind was coming kind of quartering, a little from 
 the right, and it just slid the car bodies off over to 
 the left, and there we settled down as nice and easy 
 as a rocking-chair. But I shudder to think what 
 might have happened, but for that steam." 
 
 " You'd 'a' gone right against the left hand bank, 
 bang ! as nearly as I can judge from your descrip 
 tion," remarked Tom Fenton. "I never had any 
 such narrow shave myself, but my hair did stand up 
 once, I tell you, when I was in Texas. It was a 
 breathless, hot afternoon, no wind, black clouds 
 well, you know what it's like, just before a norther 
 and I was riding range with three or four cow- 
 
7 6 
 
 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 boys, fourteen miles from shelter. Then came the 
 wind, wooh ! And all at once the black clouds 
 turned white, and began chunking us with the darn 
 edest, biggest hailstones I ever saw in my life. Most 
 of 'em were about the size of a football, but, once 
 
 in a while, a fellow as big as a rain barrel would 
 come along two or three stones stuck together, as 
 near as I could tell afterward. Well, gentlemen, 
 this sounds rather thrilling, but as I'm a man of 
 truth and honor, the very size of the hailstones was 
 our salvation. If they'd been smaller, we couldn't 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 77 
 
 'a* dodged 'em anyhow. As it was, we jumped off 
 our broncos, which were struck dead in an instant, 
 and began looking up and dodging the lumps. They 
 were so big we could see 'em coming a hundred 
 feet up, and get onto their curves. Of course, too, 
 such large hailstones couldn't be very close to 
 gether, and we were all slender young fellows and 
 active, and could get out of the way. But one of 
 the cowboys poor fellow ! was a Harvard gradu 
 ate, and as shortsighted as a second fiddle. Right 
 when we were hopping about, like hens on a hot 
 griddle, his glasses fell off, and he couldn't see a 
 thing; no sir, not a thing ! It was horrible to hear 
 his one agonizing shriek ere he fell, and not to be 
 able to help him, but we couldn't look down long 
 enough to get his lamps for him, and I don't like to 
 recall the scene. It didn't last long, but well, to 
 cut a long story short, after the bombardment stop 
 ped, we set up a heap of hailstones to mark the 
 spot, and went away. We had to go 150 miles for 
 an undertaker, and when we got back, three days 
 later, the body lay frozen within its icy monument, 
 but about it all traces of the storm had passed away, 
 and the summer sun was smiling down as sweetly as 
 if death were impossible, and storms could be no 
 more." 
 
78 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 " It must be a terrible shock to you, even now, to 
 recall such a scene, said Dr. Binninger, " may I ven 
 ture to suggest, Colonel, that " he waved a drip 
 ping punch ladle in the direction of the glass bowl. 
 For a season brief but ecstatic, the members gathered 
 about, and the gentlest of aromas, a flavor, subtly 
 insidious, of mingled rye, lemon, sugar, and other 
 benign vegetable products, was wafted throughout 
 the room. 
 
 " Speaking of punch," said the big Kentuckian, 
 setting down his glass with a long sigh; " speaking 
 of punch and I trust it may not seem the arro 
 gance of self-esteem, if I remark parenthetically, that 
 this punch, that we have just enjoyed, is most excel 
 lent I wonder if I ever told you of the time when 
 one of the largest cellars in Lexington was tempo 
 rarily transformed by the direct visitation of the 
 Almighty into a perfect sea of unparalleled punch. 
 It happened that a thriving wholesale grocery, in that 
 enterprising town, was struck by lightning, which 
 completely fused the varied contents of the seven 
 stories. It also happened that the stock in trade 
 consisted, as is usually the case in our state, of arti 
 cles imperatively demanded by the human constitu 
 tion in these latitudes, such as whiskey, sugar, 
 oranges and lemons; and these ingredients were 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 79 
 
 also most naturally present in about the proportion, 
 in which they are in usual demand. The lightning 
 broached every cask, smashed every barrel, crushed 
 every lemon, and so tore the floors that their con 
 tents speedily sought the cellar, which was fortu 
 nately equal to the responsibility. The amiable fluid 
 was there joined by a little water from the angry 
 clouds though, for myself, I could never see that 
 good punch was improved by the addition of the less 
 noble fluid and the comparatively insignificant 
 quantities of spices, fresh fruit, and other elements 
 which had been in the emporium, added to the mass 
 a certain piquancy much praised at the time by con 
 noisseurs. Many people partook appreciatively of 
 the punch, and several of Louisville's talented clergy 
 menthan whom the South has no more gifted, suh 
 preached upon the incident as an eloquent refuta 
 tion of the theories of certain fanatics, who hold 
 that the Author of the Universe looks, with dis 
 pleasure, upon convivial enjoyment of the blessings 
 by Him vouchsafed." 
 
 " After all," Fenton broke in upon the silence 
 that followed the relation of this incident, " it 
 couldn't have been better punch than this." 
 
 " Suh," said the Kentuckian, with a low bow, 
 " punch past is never equal to punch present." 
 
80 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 " The fortuitous mixture of the punch ingredients 
 reminds me," said Parker Adams, " that I once as 
 sisted at a thunder-storm in Oklahoma. After it 
 was over, the late householders were greatly sur 
 prised at finding, upon the supposed site of the 
 extinct grocery, a large mass of excellent ice-cream 
 in bulk, melting rapidly away under the sun, but 
 still good at heart. The explanation was simple. 
 The lightning-stroke which destroyed the roof of 
 the building, and shattered every barrel and bottle 
 in the place, fused and melted a dozen milk cans, re 
 leasing their contents. Directly over the cans, on 
 the shelves, were a number of paper bags of sugar, 
 a sack of flour, and seven bottles of vanilla extract, 
 whose released contents fell into the mass. Before 
 the milk had time to flow away, it was buried up in 
 such hailstones as even Oklahoma never saw before, 
 a fall of two feet occurring almost in an instant. 
 The ice balls mingling with the contents of a dozen 
 barrels of salt, which had been standing about 
 the milk cans, produced such an intense cold that 
 the mingled milk, vanilla, sugar, and flour were in 
 stantly solidified on the surface, and, in half an hour, 
 became a firm mass to the core of excellent ice 
 cream." 
 
 " If it could but come more gently," sighed Dr, 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 8 1 
 
 Binninger, "the ice would no doubt have been 
 highly appreciated in a warm climate like Okla 
 homa. Ice is even more scarce in Texas, where a 
 remarkably successful plan of obtaining it has been 
 invented, by a very dear old friend of mine, living 
 near El Paso, named Barney Medary. Even in the 
 hottest summer day Medary will partly fill a tin can 
 with water, attach it to the tail of an enormous kite, 
 and send it to the great height of three miles, where, 
 in the rarefied atmosphere, it is promptly frozen, 
 completely filling the can. After a sufficient inter 
 val, the kite is hauled in with a windlass, and 
 the cake of ice removed. But the inventor is 
 now perfecting an even more effective plan for man 
 ufacturing on a large scale. He sends up a huge 
 kite, 150 feet long, by a steel wire cable. Under 
 the kite is suspended a strong pulley, over which 
 runs an endless chain, bearing at intervals hooks, on 
 which the cans of water going up, are hung. As 
 they just balance the cans of ice coming down, but 
 little power is needed. As each hook passes the op 
 erator, he removes the can of ice, and hangs in its 
 stead one of water. The cable travels but three 
 miles an hour, and as the big kite is kept an alti 
 tude of from four to six miles, the cans remain in 
 the cold strata of the air quite long enough for the 
 
82 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 water to become solidified. The inventor expects to 
 be able to. furnish a ten-cent lump of ice for three 
 cents." 
 
 " I happen to have got wind," said Parker Adams, 
 "of an enormous scheme for modifying the cli 
 mate of the Eastern coast of North America in the 
 summer time. I expect to make a fortune out of a 
 few shares in the company. Some of the more 
 prominent investors are John James Pastor, Corne 
 lius Scott Vanderbilk, Drechsel, Dorgan & Co., and 
 others whose names are a synonym for probity and 
 vast resources. The syndicate has acquired a num 
 ber of townships of prime, glacier-bearing land in 
 the vicinity of Rejkajvik, and has contracted with 
 shipbuilders, Clamp & Sons, of Philadelphia, for a 
 fleet of powerful ocean tugs. The scheme is, in 
 brief, to tow icebergs of manageable dimensions 
 down from Rejkajvik, and deposit them at regular 
 intervals all along the coast. Then, by means of 
 powerful blast exhausts, worked by tidal power, the 
 entire air supply of a dozen sea-coast states is to be 
 passed over the cooling ice. For use on navigable 
 rivers, like the Hudson and the Delaware, ice floes, 
 drawing no more than a dozen feet of water, are to 
 be employed. 
 
 " Ice grottoes in the bergs, after the manner of 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 83 
 
 those in Swiss glaciers, are to be inexpensively cut, en 
 route, by the steam -jet process, so that when the 
 bergs arrive off the coast they will be ready to re 
 ceive visitors. Off Newport and Bar Harbor there 
 will be first, second, and third-class grottoes, after 
 the English fashion. The cost of all this might seem 
 almost prohibitive, but the syndicate is also perfecting 
 a patent by which a cheap and powerful engine can be 
 put on board an iceberg, converting it for a time into 
 a real automobile ice steamship, with its own propel 
 ler, capable of steaming four knots an hour, with 
 hydrogen fuel extracted from the atmosphere by a 
 new process. It is expected that by the summer of 
 1897 the climate of our Eastern seaboard, from 
 Charleston to Mt. Desert, will be mild, balmy and 
 equable." 
 
 " Hem! I am not sure that I could give such a 
 scheme my unqualified indorsement," remarked Dr. 
 Binninger, sagely shaking his head. " I question 
 your legal powers in the premises. Many like hot 
 weather, and will not thank you for destroying it. 
 Besides, will not your process, by robbing the coast 
 of its summer heat, make the winter's cold even more 
 unbearable. Is it not bad enough as it is ? Why, 
 only a few weeks ago, a friend of mine, George Jenks, 
 of Centralia, Kentucky, drew a quantity of boil- 
 
84 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 ing water to take a bath. The tub was cold, and the 
 water cooled so rapidly on coming in contact with it, 
 that when Jenks jumped in, he was almost instantly 
 frozen solid in the tub, and perished miserably. 
 The wind, at the time, was blowing so hard that it 
 struck a copper kettle, and blew it inside out, so that 
 the legs were inside; and twisted the well so crooked 
 that you couldn't look down it without getting dizzy." 
 
 " I say, Eckels," said Parker Adams, suddenly, 
 " have you no information on this subject to add to 
 the common stock?" 
 
 All eyes turned toward a chair away at one end of 
 the semi-circle about the hearth, where, well in the 
 shadow, a lean figure was seen, chin on palms, and 
 elbows on knees. 
 
 " Somehow I don't feel in a scientific vein this 
 evening," Eckels responded, moodily. 
 
 " You look like a pretty fair liar, too," said 
 Adams. 
 
 "Appearances are deceptive. The honest waggle 
 of a meek dog's tail doesn't denote absence of 
 teeth. A horseshoe isn't lucky when the equine 
 owner propels it against your abdomen with his fairy 
 hoof. In short, I'll be excused, please." 
 
 "What is it, old man ? " Harry Porter whispered 
 with ready sympathy. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 8$ 
 
 " Nothing," said Eckels, shortly. 
 
 "Nothing ! Great heavens ! is it so bad as that?" 
 exclaimed Porter, unconsciously quoting Eckels' 
 own words on a previous occasion. 
 
 " D n ! " growled Eckels, jumping to his feet in a 
 rage, "if I can't come here and sit quietly without 
 being pestered by old fools with requests for stories, 
 and by young ones with stale maxims, I'll get out, 
 that's all." 
 
 A minute or more elapsed after Eckels had 
 banged the door behind his retreating form; then 
 Parker Adams emitted a long, low whistle and casu 
 ally remarked: "Quite stormy, isn't it?" 
 
 They agreed that it was. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DAUGHTERS OF EVE. 
 
 Miss COPELAND and Miss Ann Copeland were as 
 much alike as two women ever are, and that is not 
 at all. Miss Copeland had hair which her admirers 
 called " sunny" and her detractors "white-horse 
 reddish." It was beautiful, it was abundant, fine, 
 long and smooth ; yet it was not her only charm ; 
 for with it went a plump though petite figure, a per 
 fect complexion and big wondering eyes. 
 
 Miss Ann Copeland was of that moderate brunette 
 type which is almost distinctly American. She was 
 taller and more athletic than her sister, her com 
 plexion had more of the olive tint, and her big, 
 brown eyes seemed in some lights almost black, 
 like her hair, which in the sunlight was seen to be 
 of a warmer hue. 
 
 The Misses Copeland, being unfortunately fairly 
 well-to-do, had " afternoons " for the want of better 
 employment, when, with the aid of other like circum 
 stanced young women, they so managed to pour tea, 
 squeeze lemons, handle tiny wafers, and otherwise 
 play hostess, that each movement was a poem, and 
 each pose a picture. It was like a child's game 
 of "play house." A healthy tramp could have 
 86 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 87 
 
 eaten and drunk everything in the room, and gone 
 away hungry ; but that wouldn't have been so 
 poetic. 
 
 Eckels was shameless. He permitted Harry 
 Porter to drop in at the Copeland house under his 
 own guidance. It was not in accordance with his 
 plans for Harry, but his own confidence, in his power 
 to please Miss Copeland, was somehow shaken, and 
 he wanted to see her again. 
 
 When the two were ushered into the parlor, where 
 already the shades were drawn, and the candles 
 lighted, though the March sun had not set, they 
 were amazed at hearing, instead of the susurrus of 
 half a dozen women's voices talking at once, certain 
 big, booming tones they well knew. Dr. Binninger 
 was seated, teacup in hand, holding forth to eight 
 or ten pretty girls. There was no other male thing 
 in the room save a tall boy of seventeen, who would 
 have been more comfortable if he had known what 
 to do with his hands. 
 
 When Eckels and Harry had greeted Mrs. Cope- 
 land, an admirably quiet and self-effacing Ameri 
 can mother ; when the daughters of the house had 
 met them with dignified reserve, and the other girls, 
 with more effusion, Essie Terburg, a tiny person 
 with a Roman nose and a retrousse disposition, cried 
 
88 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 in a shrill treble : " Oh, Mr. Eckels, Dr. Binninger 
 has been telling us such a funny story about the 
 English lord who fooled you so at the Travelers' 
 Club." 
 
 Eckels was angry to think that Binninger had 
 been putting him at a disadvantage before the 
 ladies, yet in his retort he was unable to think of 
 anything more brilliant than the familiar ''you're 
 another." 
 
 "I'm sure," he said, "that Dr. Binninger was as 
 active in giving Mr. Fraser information, and as 
 much astounded when the tables were turned, as any 
 of us." 
 
 " Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! " roared the big doctor ; so I 
 was, my boy so I was ! But it was a study to look 
 at your face. I wish the ladies could have seen you 
 when Fraser told that story about the shrinking dog. 
 Though to be sure," Dr. Binninger went on, becom 
 ing more grave, " it was no more wonderful than 
 many things which have come within my own 
 observation. Hem ! It was once my fortune, for 
 instance, to see a most terrific battle between a 
 rattlesnake and a puff adder. The rattler was so 
 strong that he quickly swallowed the other, but 
 then, so far as appeared to the interested spectator, 
 the puff adder began puffing. At any rate a great 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 89 
 
 balloon promptly appeared to be distending the rat 
 tler, and his skin seemed on the point of bursting. 
 Distracted by his frightful torture, he rushed into the 
 river, when the puff floated, naturally depressing his 
 head, until he was drowned. Of course the puff 
 adder perished with him, but had at least the satis 
 faction of selling its life as dearly as possible." 
 
 " I don't know why it is," said Nina Markham, 
 a tall and darkly beautiful girl, with the excessively 
 feminine air that big women are apt to effect ; " if 
 I were to see a snake, I should faint right away ; I 
 just know I should. And yet I do like to hear 
 about them," she added, reflectively. 
 
 " Possibly you would be interested, then, in the 
 dramatic suicide of a snake which I once witnessed 
 in Limerick, Ireland," continued Dr. Binninger. 
 " This was a large black-snake which, having been 
 worsted in a fierce battle with another of slightly 
 different species, trailed away in deep dejection. 
 Finally as it dragged itself along, closely watched 
 by Patrick McClaughry, a manufacturer of she 
 been, and by myself, resolution seemed to fire 
 the soul of the defeated reptile. Grasping firmly 
 with its mouth a small stone, the snake climbed a 
 tree, and presently hung by its tail from a horizon 
 tal limb. Next it began whirling about the limb 
 
90 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 with frightful rapidity. Longer and longer its body 
 stretched under the centrifugal strain, until, with a 
 last despairing effort, the snake's body broke in 
 halves, the weighted head and neck flying to a con 
 siderable distance, while the tail remained clinging 
 to the limb of the tree. Then only were we able to 
 see the full purpose of the act. For just as a boy 
 throws a stone from a sling, the snake, in its dying 
 moment, released the stone it held in its mouth. 
 The missile, hurling through the air, struck with 
 deadly force the rival snake, which ha 1 followed to 
 gloat over the suffering of its victim, rnd crushed it 
 dead. 
 
 " Probably the most peculiar varieties of Ameri 
 can reptilia are the hoop-snake, the glass snake, and 
 the sidewinder," continued the doctor. " In a 
 museum which I used once to visit, a glass snake 
 and rattler were confined together in a cage. The 
 rattler used to bite the other, but the glass snake 
 would promptly unjoint itself, and reunite without 
 the bitten section. By and by, when the missing 
 piece had recovered from the bite, the glass snake 
 unjointed and took it in again. But one day the 
 rattler, after biting its room-mate, formed a new 
 resolution. Before the glass snake could resume 
 possession of its missing sections, the rattler 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 9! 
 
 swallowed it, and the glass snake was forced to do 
 without a portion of its length. Again and again, 
 this operation was repeated, until there was nothing 
 left of the glass snake but its oddly joined head 
 and tail. Here the two enemies were separated. 
 The foreshortened snake, however, soon died, its 
 constitution not being equal to the strain." 
 
 "Do you believe in the sea-serpent, Dr. Binnin- 
 ger?" asked Miss Copeland, who had scarcely 
 addressed a word to Eckels since his arrival. 
 
 " Do I believe ? My dear young lady, I once saw 
 one, off the Solomon Islands, which had a huge 
 open circular mouth like an enormous life buoy, 
 with broad white lips and a dark interior big enough 
 to admit a ship's boat. The beast was twelve or 
 fifteen feet wide, and had several pairs of wing-like 
 flappers. The fins were forty feet long, and the 
 whole aspect was so generally horrid that extra grog 
 was served, and there was less profanity aboard for 
 twenty-six hours. 
 
 "Then there was a sea-serpent of undoubted 
 authenticity last summer, off Block Island, only a 
 little one about twenty feet long, and one in the 
 Indian Territory, which had a head like a cow, ears 
 like a mule, and a tail like an alligator. It was 
 seventy-three feet long." 
 
92 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 " Pshaw ! " said Mrs. Copeland, " there isn't 
 water enough in the whole Indian territory to float 
 a snake so long as that." 
 
 " Quite true," said Eckels, " but a sea-serpent a 
 
 mile long can be floated in a pint of Kansas whis 
 key smuggled over the border in a boot-leg." 
 
 " I choose to assume/' said Dr. Binninger, rather 
 stiffly, " that Mr. Eckels has forgotten that I made 
 the statement to which he apparently takes excep 
 tion, upon my own authority. To resume the sub 
 ject, the adaptability of the animal kingdom to the 
 acquired habits of man, and the imitative instinct of 
 the higher animal types, have often been noted by 
 scientific observers, like Agassiz, Buffon, and myself. 
 An interesting case is reported from Pike County, 
 Pennsylvania. In old Pike, as in many other places, 
 bicycles have become quite numerous, and have evi- 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 93 
 
 dently inspired the mute onlookers of the woods and 
 fields to emulation. The other day a Jericho ama 
 teur secured a photograph of a living bicycle. Its 
 wheels were a couple of hoop-snakes, which, before 
 forming a circle, after their usual manner, by put 
 ting their tails in their mouths, lined themselves up 
 so that a gray squirrel could scamper upon their 
 circumference as he would in a whirling-cage. With 
 his forefeet upon one animated wheel, and his hind 
 feet upon another, the squirrel could maintain its 
 level, and carry upon its own back a seated chip 
 munk. This queer combination is capable of a 
 speed of one mile in fifty-seven seconds only six 
 seconds slower than the best time of an unimpeded 
 hoop-snake." 
 
 Some of the young ladies, quickly tiring of the 
 subject, had begun a sotto voce conversation about 
 art embroidery, and the quick ear of the doctor had 
 noted the fact. Not wishing to lose an auditor, he 
 turned to the dissidents with his blankest smile : 
 
 " I suppose you have heard," he began, "of well- 
 authenticated cases, where a needle, entering a per 
 son's body, has ' traveled,' or ' worked its way,' 
 from point to point, as the ordinary, unscientific 
 person usually describes the process. These cases 
 have usually been those of persons with very soft 
 
94 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 flesh. A girl in Mobile, whom I knew very well, 
 carries this flabbiness of muscular structure to an 
 extreme. Needles thrust into her flesh seem to 
 cause her no pain, and little annoyance. She is 
 accustomed, wherever she goes, to carry several 
 needles, threaded with silk of different colors, thrust 
 into various portions of her anatomy. To get one 
 of them, she has only to hold a strong magnet upon 
 the opposite side of her person, and the needle re 
 quired is attracted right through her body." 
 
 Others dropped in, as the afternoon drew toward 
 evening. Langdon came, with his wife. Tom Fen- 
 ton "ran round," on his way home. There were 
 two or three more awkward youth, "deyv'lish fel 
 lows, don't ye know," but subdued in company. 
 And there were more girls. 
 
 Presently Harry Porter found himself talking to 
 a washed-out blonde in baby-blue, named Curtis, 
 while Ann Copeland sat within earshot. This was 
 the situation Eckels had outlined when he said, 
 " Talk at her, not to her." 
 
 " Ah, your sex is so selfish," Miss Curtis was 
 saying. 
 
 "Yet for women men have died," said Harry, 
 mentally resolved to talk his best. 
 
 "Oh, no; for indigestion, maybe." (Giggle.) 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 95 
 
 " I solemnly assure you, Miss Curtis," said 
 Harry, gravely, "that there's a woman in Atwood, 
 Illinois, for whom many men have died. She is an 
 undertaker." 
 
 "Oh, you cynic!" and Miss Curtis playfully 
 tapped Harry with her fan. 
 
 " No man can be a cynic in your presence," said 
 he, warmly, bending toward her ever so little. "And 
 no true woman can be a cynic at all, except as a 
 pose. I never saw a cynical woman. This is why 
 even the most acute of your sex so readily listen to 
 the unworthy members of mine. And what man is 
 worthy of woman ? We are such feeble folk. Miss 
 Curtis, a star once looked down on a city. It saw 
 little creatures running about. They were born, 
 died, fought, hated, kissed, loved, laughed, wept. 
 But whatever else they did, they ran about." 
 
 "Ah, but some men are not feeble,'* said the lit 
 tle blonde, with a meaning look at Harry's athletic 
 shoulders. 
 
 " When a man brags of his power, ask him to 
 make a blade of grass. Ask him why we use a spi 
 der's web, and not any thread that human ingenuity 
 can spin, to mark off the objectives of our tele 
 scopes. Ah, the folly of man ! When he would 
 recreate himself, he does not consider how he can 
 
96 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 make himself different. He only thinks of going to 
 see some new thing." 
 
 "Really, Mr. Porter," said Miss Curtis, "you 
 are so critical of men, what must you think of 
 women ? " 
 
 " I ? I am like a violin, that when pressed by the 
 hands of beauty, can emit only hoarse, unmusical 
 sounds. I am always at my worst when, with a 
 beautiful woman, I would be at my best." 
 
 " But is a woman always at her best ? " 
 
 "Possibly; probably; I do not know. At least 
 it seems so to me when I am with her. I " 
 
 " Miss Curtis," said Ann Copeland, hurriedly, 
 her clear cheeks aflame; " there's a nice boy over 
 there, who is having a horrid time. I wish you'd 
 let me bring him over for an introduction." 
 
 Eckels, meanwhile, had made a last desperate at 
 tempt to regain control of the situation, in another 
 quarter of the room, by telling Miss Copeland and 
 Nina Markham a fairy tale about the shrinking pro 
 pensities of new flannel garments, a subject some 
 how suggested by Dr. Binninger's needle story. 
 " Gus Tooper, of Alameda," he said, " had put on 
 a very heavy new flannel undershirt, which was 
 rather tight, and began work, chopping wood. Pro 
 fuse perspiration ensued, and Tooper presently com-- 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 97 
 
 plained to his companion, of a strange, oppressed 
 sensation. Then he fell, in a dying condition. The 
 inquest developed the fact that he had expired from 
 the pressure of the shrinking undershirt expelling 
 the air from his lungs. 
 
 When Eckels had lamely finished his bungling 
 tale, Miss Copeland looked at him rather queerly 
 for a moment, and then changed the subject, deftly 
 conveying the idea that the narrative bordered on 
 indelicacy. Nor would she thereafter notice his 
 presence. 
 
 So, with much chattering, the callers gradually 
 drifted away, and the sisters were left together. 
 
 " What a splendid, intellectual fellow Harry Por 
 ter is ! " said the elder, presently. " I don't see 
 why " 
 
 " That's just what May Curtis said ! The little 
 goose ! I know she didn't understand a word he 
 was saying ! " 
 
 " Well, you need n't be so spiteful about it. You 
 could have had him, if you wanted him. And, of 
 course, he is brilliant. He was in Princeton." 
 
 " I don't want him ! And as for Dr. Binninger, 
 I despise him !" 
 
 " Still," said Miss Copeland, "a man's a man; 
 and they're none too plenty at 'afternoons ' ! " 
 
98 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 " No wonder. Men have something to do ! I 
 wish I were a man ! If I were one I wouldn't let 
 any little shrimp of a woman snub me, as you did 
 John Eckels to-day. Such a splendid fellow as he 
 is, too ! " 
 
 " I don't think you're a good judge of men. You 
 threw over Harry Porter." 
 
 " I know I dud-dud-did ! Ah, hu ! hu ! hu ! 
 hu ! hu ! hu ! I wish I were dead ! " 
 
 But, surely, no such conversation ever took place; 
 ever could have taken place. 
 
 This is a Book of Lies. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LOVE HATH MURDERED SLEEP. 
 
 THE birds had all day perversely preferred whole 
 skins and freedom to the honor of reposing in their 
 game bags, and the detachment of travelers, who 
 had been tramping the Jersey marshes, were reveng 
 ing themselves over their steaming glasses by tales 
 of achievement in past campaigns. 
 
 "The most remarkable bag recorded in the 
 annals of my memory," began Dr. Binninger, " was 
 obtained by unsportsmanlike methods, which were 
 promptly and properly punished. It was in 1875, 
 when water fowl were very abundant. Not content 
 with slaughtering wild ducks by the usual methods, 
 Harry Jones, of Currituck, procured a Gatling gun 
 and loaded the cartridges with bird shot. Con 
 cealing himself in a blind, he waited until a large 
 flock approached him at great speed with a favoring 
 wind. When they had nearly reached him he 
 opened fire. The destruction was terrible, but 
 such was the impetus of the birds and the force of 
 the wind that almost the entire flock, which he had 
 slaughtered, flopped dying upon his hiding-place, 
 
 99 
 
IOO THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 and, beneath their mangled bodies, Jones perished 
 miserably by retributive suffocation." 
 
 " I know a fellow named Louis Schrempp, 
 St. Louis, had great luck shooting squirrels one 
 day '79," said Jim Hart. "Went out with 
 gun, Louis did, myself and two dogs. Presently 
 dogs began spinning * round 'n' 'round ; kept it up 
 till fell down exhausted. You see, so many 
 squirrel-tracks, couldn't tell which to follow. Then 
 Schrempp and I looked up. Trees full of squirrels, 
 I was utterly useless. Got dizzy watching dogs 
 whirl about ; but Schrempp shot away all his 
 ammunition, then began picking shot out of dead 
 squirrels to begin again." 
 
 " But," said the doctor, " he couldn't" 
 " No, he didn't. Too slow altogether ; weather 
 pretty hot. Gave it up. Picked up 157 squirrels, 
 brought me and the dogs to our senses " 
 "Yes?" doubtfully ; by all. 
 " To our senses ; then went home." 
 "An old Indian, who lives in Carson, Pennsylvania, 
 once told me that a rattlesnake will always range him 
 self in line with a stick or gun pointed at him," said 
 Eckels. " This peculiarity makes it easy for even 
 a blind man to shoot one. The Indian took me out 
 with him, and selected a nice big snake. Whenever 
 
102 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 the Indian moved his gun, the snake would get 
 in line. Finally Lo fired, and his bullet went in at 
 the snake's mouth and passed through the entire 
 length of his body. Indians have no imagination. 
 I wouldn't have wanted to do what he did with the 
 body. In the dry air of the mountains, flesh doesn't 
 decay, but dries up as hard as a brick. The Indian 
 coiled the hollow snake up, and when it had set in 
 that shape quite hard, he used it for the ' worm ' of 
 a moonshine distillery he ran, up in the hills. Ugh ! 
 No wonder the fellows who drank that whiskey saw 
 snakes ! " 
 
 After the libation suggested by the thought had 
 been carefully swallowed, Tom Fenton began a 
 reminiscence of travel. 
 
 " The African steamer Winnebah, on which I was 
 a passenger from Liberia to Oporto," he said, " had 
 a singular passage, in which sudden alterations in 
 the weather, from very hot to very cold, preyed 
 upon the superstitious fears of the sailors. Off the 
 Morocco coast, the ship sailed for sixty miles 
 through a mass of locusts, covering the water to a 
 depth of several inches. Many of the insects were 
 seven inches long. They had been blown out to 
 sea by a strong, hot wind, and a sudden cold wave 
 had killed them all." 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 103 
 
 " The stench must have been frightful in the hot 
 sun of those latitudes," said Dr. Binninger. 
 
 "Not at all. The cold wind which killed the 
 insects evidently came from Labrador. It was, at 
 any rate, heavily laden with powdered lime rock, 
 which lay in a thick dust upon the bodies and acted 
 as a disinfectant. 
 
 " The propagation of insect plagues is a fascinat 
 ing study," Fenton continued, tossing back his 
 theatrical locks, slightly tinged with gray, from his 
 pale, fine face. " In the town of Quantuck, New 
 Jersey, which lies in a low, hot nook, surrounded by 
 swampy land, the mosquitoes were so thick in the 
 season of '83 that, when the breeze was gentle, they 
 formed a thick, black cloud over the town. On 
 several occasions this was so noticeable that the 
 hens went to roost at noon, under the impression 
 that it was already nightfall, and without perform 
 ing their daily task of egg-laying. As the poultry 
 business is a leading one in the town, the fanciers 
 suffered for a time considerable financial loss, 
 until the device was hit upon of sending up small 
 dynamite cartridges among the thickest swarms of 
 mosquitoes, by means of a kite, flown by a wire, 
 which, at the right moment, conveyed a current of 
 electricity to discharge the dynamite. After a few 
 
104 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 discharges the air would be so clear that the hens 
 could resume operations, and the gory remains of 
 the dead mosquitoes, falling to the ground, were 
 plowed in as fertilizer." 
 
 " The modification of the lower animate orders by 
 natural causes is another interesting study," said 
 Parker Adams, wearily stretching his short legs to 
 the blaze. " It is well known that heat expands 
 and cold contracts ; but to an even greater extent 
 rarefied air causes expansion of soft bodies by 
 relieving them of a portion of the pressure of the 
 air. This fact, well understood by balloomsts, is 
 illustrated by the enormous size attained by the 
 mosquitoes on the top of Mount Orizaba. So large 
 have these become, after centuries of living in cool 
 and rarefied air, that it is a common amusement for 
 rich and sporty Mexicans to catch and train two of 
 them, and pit them together in a cage like wild 
 animals. The ensuing combats are described as 
 equaling, in intensity of terror, the fabled tiger 
 matches of Eastern potentates, although of course 
 the combatants are scarcely larger than good- sized 
 squirrels." 
 
 u The intelligence of the so-called lower animals 
 frequently puts to shame man's assumption that he 
 is the only reasoning section of creation," said 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. IO5 
 
 Dr. Binninger. " Robert Hinckley, of Peoria, has a 
 dog which has an unconquerable aversion to getting 
 wet. Recently, desiring to cross the river to save 
 a detour of several miles, this intelligent animal set 
 to work to build a raft. Dragging stick after stick 
 to the water's edge, he laid them side by side, 
 afterwards crossing them with others until he had 
 built a raft, frail, indeed, but amply able to sustain 
 him. Then he pushed the raft into the water and 
 jumped on. Paddling with fore and hind paws, he 
 soon propelled himself across. Nor did the animal's 
 foresight end even here, for, carefully towing the 
 raft to a little bay, he secured it, until his return, by 
 laying one end of a fence rail upon it. 
 
 " Quite as cunning, was a cat I once owned, which 
 habitually provided herself with a meat breakfast 
 by littering bread crumbs and burying herself in the 
 snow until the snowbirds came to peck at them, 
 when she leaped forth and smote them with trium 
 phant paw. This instance of sagacity is quite sur 
 passed by a cow in Oxford, Mississippi, which saved 
 herself from freezing to death, during one of the 
 frequent blizzards in that state, by swallowing a 
 lump of freshly-burned lime and industriously 
 chewing snow. The lime, in the process of slaking, 
 kept the cow warm, while all the rest of the herd 
 
IO6 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 perished. A severe fit of indigestion was the only 
 untoward result of the stomach-load of whitewash." 
 
 " I wonder how you happened to miss that shot to 
 day, Fenton," said Parker Adams, rather irrelevantly. 
 
 " In Fannin County, Georgia, there still survive 
 large numbers of wild turkeys," said Fenton, hastily, 
 affecting not to have heard the remark ; " Milton 
 Ganthony recently discovered an enormous flock of 
 these in the Splay woods, and, having no gun, was 
 at a loss how to improve the occasion. Finally he 
 happened to recall that he had a red bandanna 
 handkerchief, which he tied to a twig and then 
 withdrew, uttering a turkey call. ' When the 
 splendid birds came and saw the handkerchief, they 
 began fighting with each other fiercely about the 
 meteor flag. When the war had gone far enough, 
 which wasn't until Ganthony thought there were 
 as many dead turkeys as he could dispose of, he 
 shooed off the combatants. Besides a good wagon 
 load of turkey meat, already plucked, he got loose 
 feathers enough to make 573 turkey-tail fans." 
 
 " Ganthony was more of a hunter than you are, 
 at any rate," said Adams, returning to the attack. 
 " For my part, I find sport at the present day too 
 tame. I'd like to have lived in the old times when 
 animals were sure enough big ones. You know, of 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. IO/ 
 
 course, that Montana was formerly inhabited by a 
 race of prehistoric buffaloes. Ephraim Rogers, a 
 well-known Butte trapper, owes to this fact his life. 
 While out of reach of his rifle, Eph was chased 
 by a grizzly. It was on a bleak and desolate plain 
 and no tree was within miles. Suddenly Eph espied 
 a hollow buffalo horn of enormous size, into -the butt 
 end of which he dived in desperation. On came the 
 bear after him. Eph is a man of slender build, 
 while the bear's head and shoulders were very 
 massive, so that while the former easily crawled 
 out of the little end of the horn, it was carried 
 off by the blinded and infuriated bear, who could 
 not dislodge it from his head. That night a 
 mining-camp thirty-seven miles from the scene of 
 the adventure was put into a panic by the apparition 
 of an animal of curious appearance which, when 
 shot, proved to be no other than Roger's late 
 antagonist, still firmly fixed in its extinguisher 
 of buffalo bone, and unable to see where it was 
 going." 
 
 " By the way," said Dr. Binninger, " speaking of 
 buffaloes reminds me of the proposition to replace 
 the buffalo upon the Western plains by the hardy, 
 edible, domesticable, acclimatable and philoprogeni 
 tive kangaroo. Old travelers in Australia can 
 
108 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 recall numerous instances of the cunning of these 
 marsupials. In the Karaboo diggings, in the summer 
 of 1887, a gathering of kangaroos came to the bank 
 of the Waroo River, and began figuring how to get 
 across. Presently one of the smallest and lightest 
 went back from the bank a little way, and several 
 big fellows ranged themselves in line. Down came 
 the little one, leap after leap, and, as he reached the 
 line, each of the others in turn gave him a tremen 
 dous kick until, with the last one's final boost, his 
 momentum became so great that he landed dry shod 
 upon the further bank. Here he shoved a farmer's 
 boat into the water, and after that all was easy, 
 the entire party crossing the river in about seven 
 trips. 
 
 "Those who know the habits of the kangaroos 
 regard them as man's chief friend. When lost 
 upon the arid Australian plain, miles from visible 
 water, the prospector or herdsman always hails 
 with delight the appearance of a kangaroo well. 
 
 " The kangaroos, when they wish to dig a well, 
 gather in numbers and mark out a circle of about 
 three feet in diameter. Then each in turn runs and 
 jumps into the circle landing stiff-legged ker- 
 chug ! upon his hind feet. In this way the hole 
 is sunk lower and lower, precisely as a drill sinks 
 
THE BOOK OP LIES. 109 
 
 into a rock with each successive blow. The loose 
 dirt is brought out, from time to time, in the pouches 
 of the diggers. A well has seldom to be sunk more 
 than eighteen feet to strike water, and at that depth 
 it is an easy thing for a kangaroo to jump in and 
 out again, though, in the case of a very deep well, 
 there is sometimes a platform half way. 
 
 " I never suffered from thirst in my life," Dr. Bin- 
 ninger went on ; " thirst for water, I mean. I do 
 not know what the sensation is. But a hunter may 
 face perils as deadly in hunting squirrels in the 
 Maine woods as in the heart of Africa. Once, under 
 conditions such as I have described, I reached 
 up my gun barrel to knock a lump of spruce gum 
 from a tree trunk. The gum lodged in the muzzle 
 of the gun, and thoughtlessly, though the day was 
 very cold, I attempted to pick the gum off with my 
 teeth. Instantly my wet lips and tongue froze to 
 the barrel, causing me the most excruciating agony. 
 I was far from home, and it was difficult to walk in 
 the constrained position rendered necessary by the 
 gun. . Finally, as I stumbled through the bushes, 
 the hammer of the gun caught and it exploded. 
 My first thought was : < Well, my brains are blown 
 out and I must be dead.' But I was not only alive 
 but sound, and released from the gun. The severe 
 
1 10 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 cold had so contracted the barrel that the bullet, 
 heated and expanded by the burning powder, could 
 travel only about eighteen inches toward the muzzle, 
 where it stuck fast. The breech of the gun simply 
 blew out. The heat generated by the friction and 
 explosion of the bullet a moment later warmed the 
 gun-barrel just enough to release my frozen lips 
 from the kiss of death." 
 
 " Extreme cold weather brings many dangers," 
 said Fenton. "I was once in Kansas at a time 
 when a crack in the earth was opened by the com 
 bined action of extreme heat on the inside and 
 extreme cold on the outside. This fissure, which 
 was situated near Union Star, was only about five 
 inches wide, but emitted a smell like burning wool 
 at least a yard wide. The people of the neighbor 
 hood tried at first to fill the fissure by throwing in 
 various substances, but desisted upon hearing a 
 faintly echoing voice ascend one day, freighted 
 
 with the query : ' What the are you doing up 
 
 there ! I'm from Kansas myself. Stop throwing 
 them stones ! ' " 
 
 Sleep comes soon to eyelids weighted with fatigue. 
 One by one the men about the fire nodded, and 
 slipped away to bed, and presently Eckels and 
 Harry Porter found themselves alone. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. Ill 
 
 " You made quite a hit at the reception, Porter," 
 said Eckels, presently. "That Curtis girl was 
 visibly impressed by your wisdom. How in thunder 
 did you manage it?" 
 
 " Simply by following your admirable advice. I 
 thought up some brilliant sayings myself, and copied 
 some more out of a newspaper and memorized them 
 all. Then the other day, when I saw that Ann was 
 listening, I just got them off one after another, 
 whether they fitted into the conversation or not. 
 And, by George, they didn't know the difference ! " 
 
 " I should say not ! " said Eckels, ironically ; 
 " The blue girl halfway fell in love with you then and 
 there, and Ann came to the conclusion that you're 
 a deep and dangerous person in need of reforma 
 tion. Of course that settled her. You're all right 
 if you'll only be patient. But did you see the 
 Prince of Wales frost I got ? " 
 
 te Don't be discouraged, Jack ; follow your own 
 advice. And now I think it's high time you told 
 me what to do next. Isn't the field right for a 
 direct attack ? " 
 
 "No, not yet ; but I will tell you." 
 
 And the fire burned lower yet before the two men 
 sought their belated beds. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A WANDERER FROM THE WRATH. 
 
 A NUMBER of men from the Travelers' Club had 
 stopped in the barber's shop on Fulton street, one 
 day in early Spring, and the barber made the dis 
 covery that Parker Adams was becoming bald. 
 
 " I have here, " he said " a tonic that" 
 
 u Tonics are a crude substitute for the resources 
 which science is now able to bring to the relief of 
 bald men," said Dr. Binninger. 
 
 " Wear a wig ? " asked the barber. 
 
 " f do not, sir; " and Dr. Binninger deftly adjusted 
 it under guise of scratching his head ; " nor do I 
 now refer to wigs at all. I have read, however, an 
 American item to the effect that both wigs and 
 tonics are quite out of fashion in France, even 
 among the entirely bald. Holes are made in the 
 head with a gimlet, and each hair inserted separately 
 and soldered in its place. The process is said to be 
 extremely soothing, and the result is charming, the 
 metallic hue of the solder gleaming gaudily through 
 the surrounding stubble." 
 
 " How know its American ? " demanded Jim Hart. 
 
 " Because I saw it in the London Million" said 
 
 112 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 113 
 
 the big doctor, shortly. " I am reminded by my 
 surroundings that a unique occupation for lazy 
 men has been invented by a Denver barber, who has 
 a wonderful patent hair restorer, which I myself 
 once used, and to whose aid I owe the remarkable 
 preservation of my natural covering. He hires a 
 number of ex-clergymen, who have left the East on 
 account of chronic ministerial sore throat, to sit in 
 armchairs all day long and grow heads of hair. 
 The tonic is applied three times a day, and the 
 clergymen are shorn once a weak. The hair is 
 made up on the spot by expert wig-makers, and the 
 refuse is used for cushion stuffing. The wages 
 paid range from $9 to $16 a week, and found, and 
 afford the rarest opportunity to combine recupera 
 tive leisure with remunerative industry, which it has 
 been my good fortune to observe." 
 
 Here a slight commotion was observed in the 
 rear of the room, where a colored bootblack had 
 established his stand. The operator thereat had 
 knelt on his own footstool and, with his face buried 
 in his hands, was quivering violently. 
 
 "That boy's back looks familiar," said Dr. Bin- 
 ninger, reflectively ; " looks like a likely boy I used 
 to know, Bill Coons of Canton, Arkansas. Coons 
 and a man named Bargelt were taking a short cut 
 
114 THE BOOK 'OF LIES. 
 
 through the woods recently, hauling on a stoneboata 
 windlass they were intending to use in digging a well 
 on the Milt Jones place. Passing a big, hollow tree, 
 Bargelt saw a 'possum tail in the opening, and tried 
 to pull the beast out, but met with unexpected 
 resistance. It is well-known by old hunters that a 
 number of opossums treed under such circumstances 
 will cling closely to each other to defeat the efforts 
 of the hunter. 
 
 " 'Set up the win'lass while I hoi' on !' shouted 
 Bargelt. 
 
 " In about ten minutes Coons had the windlass 
 stoutly pegged out, and the well -rope was noosed 
 round the hind quarters of the only 'possum in 
 sight. But, strain as they might at the windlass 
 crank, the two men could not make the 'possums 
 budge. 
 
 " Now, thoroughly excited, they tackled the old 
 horse to the windlass crank, and by uniting their 
 efforts with his, they had presently hauled out of the 
 tree a long rope of 'possums, each of which clung to 
 the next one by winding his tail 'round his neck. 
 After their manner, the 'possums feigned death 
 until the last one had been killed with clubs, when 
 they were loaded on the stoneboat for transportation 
 home. There were 137 of them in all, yielding 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 1 15 
 
 about T,OOO pounds of meat, which sold readily for 
 seven and one-half cents a pound, net. The skins 
 were worth twenty-three cents apiece." 
 
 The boot-black now shook so violently that the 
 chair rattled. 
 
 "Sick, Henry?" asked a journeyman barber, 
 with pompadour hair and a horseshoe scarfpin. 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 " Ah, t'ell wi' the coon ! " judicially observed the 
 head barber. " Next ! " 
 
 " The Southwest is indeed a land of surprises," 
 said Dr. Binninger. " For instance, the skill of 
 the vaqueros is marvelous. Juan Fernandez, of 
 Santa Fe, was crossing the prairie recently, when 
 he was met by a ferocious bull. At a critical moment 
 his horse thrust its foot into a prairie dog hole 
 and fell, leaving Juan on foot. Just as the bull 
 was thundering down upon him in the charge, 
 an opportune whirlwind passed near the scene, and 
 was instantly lassoed by Fernandez. It whirled 
 him away in a cloud of dust and dried grass, and, 
 in a moment, he was far out of reach of the bull and 
 headed nearly straight for home. Here, boy ! " the 
 .doctor continued, walking back to the kneeling figure 
 at the boot-black's chair, " Wake up, there ! I want 
 a shine ! " 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 With a howl of terror, the boot-black darted toward 
 the open door, his face livid, his limbs quaking. 
 " Here, George ! Henry ! Charles ! Abraham 
 
 Lincoln ! " shouted the 
 doctor. "There, he's 
 gone. Did you see who 
 that was ? By the im 
 mortal George Wash 
 ington, that was Jhe very 
 boy who ran away from 
 the club ! Now, what 
 can be the matter this 
 time ? Why such pre 
 cipitate haste to es 
 cape?" 
 
 " Aw,don't mind 'im," 
 remarked the head bar 
 ber ; " Vs nutty. 'E's 
 full o'dope. 'E's bug 
 house, sure. 'E ain't 
 been a thing but scared 
 of 'is shadder ever sin' 
 'e come 'ere. James, 
 chase out V git a boy to shine up th' gent. It's 
 good tonic, all right, all right." 
 
 " Most curious how that boy acted," mused Dr. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 1 17 
 
 Binninger ; " but speaking of baldness, did you 
 ever reflect upon its cause and cure, and upon the 
 erroneous notions current concerning it ? Some say 
 it is due to the excessive eating of meat, but its 
 more likely to result from worrying about how to 
 pay for the meat. It cannot be due to wearing hats, 
 for the hatless Romans and Greeks were frequently 
 bald ; nor to a wicked and ill-spent life, for the 
 bald theological student and fierce and hairy train 
 robber disprove any such theory. Painters wear 
 long hair, yet frequently represent the saints and 
 apostles as bald. There are no bald heads in luna 
 tic asylums. The whirring of wheels in the brain 
 seems favorable to productiveness of hair on the 
 scalp. I wish I knew to what cause to attribute the 
 erratic behavior of that boy." 
 
 " Aw' 'e's dotty. 'E sees 'em again," said the 
 head barber. " Is this an open game? Kin I come 
 in?" 
 
 " If you stand pat," said Hart. 
 
 " Say," said the barber, continuing his deft strokes 
 as he spoke. " This bald business is queer, all 
 right, all right. I'm a farmer, that's right. Come 
 from Island Falls, Maine. The' was a big tannery 
 there ; used up 600 hides a day. Say, the water in 
 the tan pit was a hair tonic. That's right. Sprout 
 
Il8 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 the hair on a billiard ball in three applications. Say, 
 the baldies use' to come a hundred miles to souse 
 the tan pickle on their cocos. Then they stopped 
 all at once ; found out the new hair was growing in 
 red, brindle, black and white, any old color. Say, 
 it was jes' like the cow's hair been soaked off in the 
 pit. Say, that's about when I lit out. Place too 
 big to hold me. Say, good old New York ain't in 
 it wit' no Island Falls. I guess nit ! " 
 
 "Your custom of expressing a proposition by 
 affirming its negative makes your narrative difficult 
 to follow," said Dr. Binninger, " but it seems a most 
 worthy and interesting one." 
 
 "The mention of Maine reminds me," said Tom 
 Fenton, " of a cat named Fanny, owned by a lady 
 in Thomaston in that state. This cat had kittens, 
 as cats named Fanny frequently do. Hearing her 
 mistress remark that the kittens must all be drowned, 
 Fanny removed them one day to a safe hiding-place. 
 After a day or two she brought them back to the 
 mistress with an air of triumph. It was then seen 
 that she had, with teeth and claws, torn to pieces an 
 old canvas and cork life-preserver, and had fastened 
 a piece of cork around each kitten's neck. Moved 
 to pity by the sight, the mistress said : ' Fannie, not 
 one of your kittens shall ever be hurt/ At this the 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 119 
 
 intelligent mother took off the bits of cork and went 
 to sleep in perfect confidence. 
 
 " The intelligence of animals is sometimes won 
 derful. There is a girl in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 
 whom I know very well, as she is engaged to a 
 friend, who has a musical cat, trained by patient 
 practice to sing the popular songs of the day to the 
 lively accompaniment of the banjo. ' Ben Bolt ' is 
 Kitty's favorite, but it is as good as a show to see 
 her march out of the room with a distended tail and 
 air of offended dignity when the chords of Say 
 Au revoir, but not Goodby/ begin to smite the air." 
 
 " If animals cannot reason," said Dr. Binninger, 
 " their inborn instincts frequently seem to differ 
 from reason in nothing save that they are even 
 more shrewd. A Manx cat of the gentler sex, 
 residing in Oshkosh, was recently confronted by the 
 necessity of saving four kittens from a spring flood 
 which menaced their home. There was no time to 
 take them, one by one, to a place of safety. But 
 not for an instant did the intelligent animal hesitate. 
 Leaping high from the floor, she knocked down 
 from its hook a cap worn at school by the boy of 
 the household, and this she placed bottom up on 
 the ground. Then, placing the kittens in it, one by 
 one, she seized the visor in her teeth and hurried 
 
120 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 away to a place of safety, dragging after her her 
 extemporized baby carriage. 
 
 " The mention of cats naturally reminds me of 
 their hereditary foes, mice and rats, which are 
 animals quite as shrewd. It is a fact well known to 
 scientists that even the lower forms of nature follow 
 to some extent the peculiarities of the men with 
 whom they are thrown. Naturally in Connecticut, 
 where men are wise beyond the ways of their kind 
 elsewhere, lesser beasts have also wisdom of a high 
 order. A mouse this happened in Norwich 
 which, I am told, is pronounced by the inhabitants 
 so that it rhymes with porridge ' finding himself 
 caught in one of those traps from which egress is 
 discouraged by a chevaux de frise of pointed wires, 
 spied, on the floor, near the trap, a piece of stout 
 string and a toothpick. Painfully he succeeded in 
 clawing them into the cage, and, looping the string 
 about one of the wires, he attached the other end 
 snugly to the wall at one side. Then, applying the 
 toothpick in the manner of the stick in a tourniquet, 
 he twisted the string until the fibre torsion bent the 
 pointed wire back out of the way. Another and 
 another of the wires was similarly treated, until 
 escape was easy, when the mouse took his leave, the 
 tourniquet remaining to testify to his shrewdness. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 121 
 
 Unaided by this device, a dozen mice could not 
 have bent a single wire." 
 
 " Done ! " said the fortuitous boot-black, who had 
 been brought in from the street to polish the doctor's 
 vast boots. 
 
 "Ah, a very excellent polish !" said the doctor, 
 fumbling in his pocket. " Now, where the mischief 
 by Jove, I ah, thanks ! thanks ! " For the re 
 turned miner, noticing his plight, had thrust a dime 
 into the boot-black's hand. 
 
 " I really wonder what ailed that ridiculous boy," 
 said Fenton. 
 
 " It is indeed most mysterious/' said Dr. Binnin- 
 ger. " Were it not that every colored boy instinc 
 tively recognizes a Southern gentleman of the old 
 school as his natural friend and protector, I should 
 almost have said that he was terrified by the sight 
 of me. I shall never rest until the mystery is 
 solved." 
 
 " 'F I see 'im I'll drop y' th' tip," said the head 
 barber. " Next ! " 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FISH AND HIS LIE ARE NEVER PARTED. 
 
 " YES," said Dr. Binninger, " trout fishing is very 
 well for mere amusement ; " but I have seen con 
 tests with the scaly folk so much more exciting that 
 I almost wonder at myself for displaying such 
 interest in the day's doings. It is the sporting 
 instinct, gentlemen. I suppose I should kill flies if 
 I couldn't get at lions." 
 
 It was mid-April and St. Trout's day. Several of 
 the Travelers had been whipping the brook which 
 ran through the preserves of a country club that 
 counted most of them as members ; and they had 
 ceased to catch fish only to eat fish : and ceased to 
 eat them only to talk about them. 
 
 14 What was the best fishing you ever saw, Doc ? " 
 asked Eckels. 
 
 " Hem ! I am not altogether accustomed to the 
 abbreviation of my scientific title, but I will overlook 
 the matter in consideration " 
 
 "No offense intended, doctor," murmured Eckels. 
 
 "Ah, quite so. Don't mention it, my dear boy. 
 But to return to the query : the best fishing, or at 
 least, the most plentiful catching of fish, I have 
 
 122 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. . 123 
 
 ever witnessed was in Manitoba. When mellow 
 autumn gilds the valleys in that far northern clime, 
 the wild grapes, which grow along the banks of the 
 streams, ungathered, fall, over-ripe and fermenting, 
 by tons into the water, transforming every stream 
 for the time being into a fair sample of toddy. It 
 is at these periods that such of the farmers as 
 retain command of their legs are accustomed to 
 pick out dead-drunken fish with their bare hands to 
 salt down for winter, and I can assure you, suh, 
 that fish so cured in the fumes of the gentle juices 
 of the grape, dying as it were in the odor of sanctity, 
 are, even in the salted state, food fit for the gods." 
 
 " Was in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, once," said 
 Jim Hart. " Noticed alder bushes along stream all 
 barked and dying. Asked friend why this thus. 
 Carp so thick and eager, jumped out of water after 
 flies, bit bushes, gnawed bark off, bushes dead for 
 miles." 
 
 "The German carp is indeed a voracious and 
 hardy fish," said Dr. Binninger. " Recent long and 
 frequent droughts in Western Kansas and Nebraska 
 have proved the German carp to be a fish of peculiar 
 adaptability and versatility. When the streams 
 have dried up, the carp have taken to burrowing in 
 the mud at the bottom to avoid the farmers' boys, 
 
124 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 who come with baskets to pick 'em up ; but it's hard 
 beating a Kansas farmer. They soon discovered 
 that by plowing the river and lake bottoms, and by 
 running a potato-digging machine along the furrows, 
 they could harvest carp by the wagon load with 
 very little trouble, and the discovery has fairly 
 revolutionized the fish industry of the middle 
 western states. 
 
 'The fish," the big doctor went on, leisurely 
 puffing a very strong black cigar, " has often been 
 maligned by so-called scientists who have held him 
 to be a low organization, incapable of arduous 
 thought. Of, late, however, his character has been 
 rescued by other scientists of better-standing and 
 greater accuracy, who, reasoning from wider data, 
 have arrived at a different conclusion. Hem ! per 
 haps modesty should prevent my speaking in this 
 strain ; hence I will merely relate a little incident of 
 a fisherman who went down into Lake Keuka in 
 ships of the skiff variety in order to fish, trailing a 
 jug of bait behind the boat to keep cool. He was 
 twice annoyed by having his jugs broken, which, of 
 course, put an end to the fishing for the day. On 
 the second occasion when this occurred, the fisher 
 man, soon after, saw a large fish swimming about 
 near the surface in a lazy and irresolute sort of way. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 12$ 
 
 He rowed up to the fish, and, to his surprise, was 
 able to pick it up in his hands. The fish was per 
 fectly sound, but had rather more color than usual, 
 and its breath smelled strongly of alcohol. 
 
 " This gave the astute fisherman an idea. Next 
 day he trailed behind his boat a jug, wherein the 
 lure was cunningly commingled with opium. Hid 
 in the stern of the boat, while another rowed, he 
 kept sharp watch. Presently he saw a number of 
 monstrous fish approach, bearing on their noses a 
 stone they had evidently rooted out of the lake 
 bottom. One sharp crack from this broke the jug, 
 when the thieves eagerly drank up the liquid as it 
 mingled with the surrounding water. Shortly after 
 ward a number of the finest fish ever seen on the 
 lake floated on the top in their opium dream of bliss 
 and were captured." 
 
 " I think you must be right about the possession 
 of intellect by fish," added Tom Fenton ; "and 
 though I lay no claim to rank as a scientist, I can 
 adduce an interesting tale showing the possession by 
 a fish of a high degree of moral rectitude. There 
 have been very many cases where fishes have been 
 caught, in whose capacious maws were found long 
 missing rings, necklaces, baseball masks, and such 
 like trifles. Once in a great while a thieving fish is 
 
126 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 stricken by its conscience into a desire to make res 
 titution. Such a fish was the giant cat, which lay 
 watching the shore of the turbid Kaw all through 
 the month of April, 1879 or 1880, I am not quite 
 sure which. Many fishermen tried to land him, but 
 he contemptuously refused the most tempting lures, 
 until a tall man of striking personal appearance came 
 one day and cast his tackle on the^waters. The big 
 cat leaped from the water and fell at his feet with 
 out waiting for hook and line. The tall man was 
 astounded. On cutting open the fish afterward, he 
 discovered a gold eagle, which he had lost a year be 
 fore, lying in the fish's stomach. Most wonderful 
 of all, there were besides sixty copper cents, one 
 year's legal interest, which the noble fish had yielded 
 up its life in trying to restore with the principal." 
 
 " To return to the more strictly scientific aspects 
 of the question," said Dr. Binninger, " not but 
 that the moral problem is highly interesting I 
 should like to speak briefly of the aesthetic rather 
 than the ethical side of the piscine nature. Until 
 some recent discoveries by Prof. Saussier of Vevey, 
 Switzerland, it was not suspected that fishes were 
 affected by music. In a shallow inlet Prof. Saus 
 sier found, not long ago, a queer arrangement of 
 strings in the water which demanded examination. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 Viewing the affair from a distance with a water tele 
 scope, he saw that some fishes, which had, by the 
 usual painful method, gained possession of several 
 fragments of fish-line, were passing them around two 
 sticks thrust into the water by some fisherman. 
 When the strings were strung the stakes were 
 wedged apart by piling stones between them so as 
 to tighten the strings, three or four fishes rolling a 
 stone along the bottom with their noses. 
 
 " The operation was necessarily slow. The pro 
 fessor watched it at intervals for two or three days. 
 Finally, when all was ready, the largest fish seized 
 a stick or bone, and, using it as a plectrum, twanged 
 the strings with it, while the other fishes gathered 
 around to hear the music. -Of course there was 
 none, as the submerged strings refused to sound. 
 After several trials, the fishes tore up their water lyre 
 in disgust. They had probably caught their idea 
 from Atme*e Saussier, the professor's daughter, who 
 was in the habit of playing a harp by the bank." 
 
 " Speaking of gigantic fish," said Tom Fenton, 
 " I well remember going up the Ohio in a kick-be 
 hind steamer one hot day in August last year. The 
 river was so low that the sun rose at 1 1 A. M. and 
 set at 2. It was like a canyon. At one of the low 
 est places I saw an enormous catfish, weighing prob- 
 
128 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 ably 500 pounds, lying near a sand-bar which 
 stretched right across the river. A moment after 
 the steamer passed, the wave from the wheel reached 
 the big cat and he floated over the bar. There 
 hadn't been water enough before to float him. Af 
 terward I learned in Pittsburg, that many attempts 
 had been made to capture the fish by wading parties. 
 But whenever a number of men rolled up their trou 
 sers and waded in to attempt his discomfiture, the 
 big fish would use his fins to roll himself over and 
 over like a log, and so escape. After two men had 
 had legs broken by trying to stop the rolling fish, the 
 attempt was given up. Once, when the fish was 
 asleep, a steamer struck him and was nearly wrecked. 
 Some of the scales were bumped off his side, and 
 they were nearly as big as my hand." 
 
 " And he was never captured ? " asked Eckels. 
 
 " Never." 
 
 "It involves, perhaps, a slight change of the sub 
 ject," said Eckels, " but an instance in which a fish 
 was discomfited and made to do a signal service to 
 its ancient enemy, the cat, may be in order. Ursula 
 Jenks, of Paducah in your old state, Dr. Bin- 
 ninger had a cat which had either outlived or failed 
 to realize its usefulness, and which she threw into a 
 pond, weighted with a six-pound dumb-bell lovingly 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 I2 9 
 
 attached by a string to its neck. Then ensued a 
 strange sight. The. cat, with remarkable presence 
 of mind, grasped, as she was going down, at an enor 
 mous pickerel, which had been attracted by the pros 
 pect of a meal. Away went the pickerel at a fright 
 ful speed, the cat held on with the grip of death, 
 and the dumb-bell came plunging after, until the 
 
 string, wherewith it had been attached to her, being 
 worn by sharp stones, parted. Then the cat came 
 to the surface and swam ashore." 
 
 " By the way, Eckels, my boy," said Dr. Bin- 
 ninger, " how is that little affair of the heart pro 
 gressing?" 
 
 "What affair of what heart?" said Eckels, who 
 
I3O THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 had sat rather gloomily listening to the conversation, 
 but taking no part in it. 
 
 "Pshaw, my boy ! Don't attempt to deceive a 
 man of my years and experience, and above all, do 
 not seek to repel the kindly assistance prompted by 
 a sympathetic heart. I presume you have seen the 
 time, su-h, when a million dollars wouldn't look so 
 big to you as a single tress of hair of that tint in 
 which the sun loves to linger. Strange thing, this 
 love ! Nothing in the world ever could be so de 
 lightful as courtship would be, if it only were. 
 Courtship is the skirmish before the battle of mat 
 rimony. Courtship is when may we congratulate 
 you, sir ? " 
 
 " There's no use going around prepared for emer 
 gencies," said Eckels, shortly, " because emergen 
 cies never happen when you expect them to. I'm 
 not open to congratulations. Congratulate Harry, 
 there. He's big and can stand it." 
 
 "Harry?" said Dr. Binninger. "What non 
 sense ! Harry is not old enough to marry yet a 
 mere boy of twenty-six ! It is true that I myself 
 married at twenty-three, but if I may say it, I was 
 very mature and very responsible in business ways. 
 Yes, suh, I " 
 
 y the way, Dr. Binninger," said Harry, finding 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 131 
 
 his tongue, " as I am going back very early in the 
 morning and am rather short, would you mind giv 
 ing me that twenty now ? " 
 
 "Curious, my dear boy," said the doctor as 
 blandly as if he were conferring an inestimable fa 
 vor, " but I find that in the hurry of departure, I 
 came up here with only barely sufficient funds my 
 self. But, my dear boy, perhaps some other gen 
 tleman" 
 
 " Oh, no matter," said Harry, " I shall manage 
 all right." 
 
 The subject of courtship was not again mentioned. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE EXPECTED HAPPENS ; ALSO THE UNEXPECTED. 
 
 BY one of those quite accidental coincidences 
 which have to be carefully thought out beforehand, 
 Harry Porter was striding along Twenty-third street 
 one afternoon at a rapid pace, regardless of the 
 throng of shoppers, not a few of whom looked with 
 pleasure on his tall, strong frame, handsome face 
 and shining eyes. Ann Copeland was just ahead 
 of him. She was on the same side of the street, and 
 going somewhat slower. It is needless to add that 
 she was presently overtaken. 
 
 Apparently Harry's strength was not equal to 
 further maintaining his rapid pace, for, greeting Ann 
 with laborious coolness, he walked by her side ; 
 neither knew whither. 
 
 "I am afraid/' she said presently, " that I am 
 wasting your time. You seemed in such a hurry." 
 
 "Oh, no," Harry replied. "I have nothing on 
 hand at the moment except by the way, did it 
 ever occur to you that there is no one in this world 
 who has such a good time as Time ? " 
 
 " No no ; I can't say that it ever did." 
 
 " Well, it's true. While the rest of us are hustling 
 132 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 133 
 
 around trying to make our living, all Time has to 
 do is just to sit still and elapse. Time neither eats, 
 nor drinks, nor wears rubber overshoes when the 
 
 walking is damp, yet the careless creature will out 
 live all of us." 
 
 " Yet time is sometimes weary," said Ann Cope- 
 land, with a sigh. 
 
134 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 " Has it seemed so to you?" murmured Harry, 
 bending over her. Then he hastily checked himself 
 and went on : " Time never sleeps, because it never 
 has to. The most it does is to drouse on Sunday 
 afternoons. Time is plain and matter of fact, while 
 Eternity puts on airs and gets its name spelled with 
 a capital letter, but it's all the same old Time. No 
 one knows when Time began being Time, or when 
 it is going to leave off. We are dumped in the 
 middle of it ; that's all we know." 
 
 "Why, isn't that the ferry-house ahead?" de 
 manded the girl. "We've walked clear over to the 
 North river. I I didn't notice. We must go back 
 to the square." 
 
 Together they turned to retrace their steps. 
 
 "Nan," said Harry softly, plucking at an imagi 
 nary fleck of dust upon her sleeve, and watching her 
 cheeks' quick flush, " Nannetta mia, I am something 
 of a liar myself." 
 
 "Very possible," she responded with freezing 
 hauteur, suddenly assumed in that way that women 
 have. 
 
 " I can tell you more lies in five minutes than Dr. 
 Binninger could in a day, and I'm going to begin 
 now." 
 
 " I do not think they will interest me," 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 135 
 
 "Then you are mistaken. They will interest 
 you, though you may not like them. You are an 
 extremely homely young woman, and I detest 
 you." 
 
 Ann looked at him in wide-eyed amazement, as 
 if fearing that he had become suddenly insane. 
 
 " You squint," Harry went on with judicial grav 
 ity; " your complexion is abominable. While you 
 may fall somewhat short of absolute deformity, 
 you are as ungraceful as a woman can be. I think 
 you dye your hair, and it's a fright at that. I sup 
 pose you have the worst taste in dress I ever saw 
 outside of a dime museum, but it really doesn't 
 matter, as no kind of a costume could redeem your 
 innate ugliness. You have a mind to match your 
 appearance. For downright folly, perversity, and 
 all the unamiable attributes that can be in one 
 woman compact, I have never seen your equal. I 
 wouldn't marry you under any circumstances. You 
 are " 
 
 The girl clapped both hands over her face, fully 
 intending to burst into tears. Instead, the humor 
 of the avowal conquered her mood, and she laughed 
 more merrily than she had done for days. 
 
 " Do you really love me so much ? " she whis 
 pered, glancing up into his eyes, then dropping her 
 
136 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 own. They were walking very slowly now and 
 very close, side by side. 
 
 "Indeed I do dear," he said, " I told you I 
 could lie, but I'd rather not." 
 
 For a little while there was silence. A begrimed 
 messenger boy walked backward just before them, 
 grinning up into their faces, but they did not see 
 him. This robbed the performance of interest, and 
 he presently tired of it. 
 
 " Tell me some more lies," she said presently. 
 
 " Well, you are" 
 
 "No, no. Not that kind," she said, with a sudden 
 tremor in her voice. 
 
 Well, what kind ? " ' 
 
 "Oh, I don't care. Fish lies, maybe." 
 
 "All right. Once there was a darling girl no, 
 that isn't the way they begin. Hem ! It was ow 
 ing to the fact that water is an excellent conductor 
 of sound that Jake Watlin, of Sebogatackoconticook 
 Pond, Maine, heard, while fishing there, a curious 
 burring noise, which seemed to proceed from be 
 neath the boat. Presently he caught a large pick 
 erel to which was attached a fine open-faced gold 
 watch, by a black silk cord, jauntily swung about 
 the fish's body, just back of the gills. Mystery of 
 mysteries, the watch was running, and within two 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 137 
 
 minutes and thirty-seven seconds of correct time. 
 Anxious to solve the riddle, Watlin put the fish, 
 just as he was, into a tub of water, transferring him 
 at the dock into a large tank. Close watch was kept 
 on the fish for several days, when he was seen to 
 wind his watch by laying it flat on its back, and 
 turning the stem with his mouth. It was the sound 
 of this operation that Watlin had heard. The watch 
 was presently reclaimed by its owner, who had 
 dropped it into the lake seventeen years before." 
 
 "No," said the happy girl; "that isn't right. 
 Tell me something that happened to yourself." 
 
 "Well, let me see. Hem! Equal intelligence 
 and far greater fierceness and s avoir fair e were 
 shown by a big catfish in the Ohio river, near 
 Wheeling, whose acquaintance I once made. I was 
 fishing with a party of friends in a boat, when I was 
 suddenly jerked overboard by a gigantic tug at my 
 line. Partly, I suppose, from fright and nervous 
 ness, I clung to my line, and was rapidly dragged 
 down into the cool, translucent depths of the water. 
 Here I was horrified at receiving a violent blow on 
 the back of the head. Opening my eyes, I could 
 dimly see a huge catfish, its jaw torn and bleeding, 
 from the hook, holding in its mouth a jagged rock 
 weighing several pounds, with which it was viciously 
 
138 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 jabbing at my face and head. I dropped the line 
 and rose to the surface exhausted, and was rescued 
 by my friends; a moment after I toppled over in 
 the boat, faint with loss of blood from several fright 
 ful gashes. The fish, which escaped, weighed sev 
 enty-nine pounds." 
 
 " Oh, you poor boy ! " 
 
 " Well, dear, you can kiss the scars the naughty 
 fish made, and they'll be well when we get oft this 
 confounded street. By the way, is that the same 
 old ferry house ahead ? " 
 
 "Why no, it's I declare, we've walked clear over 
 to the East river ! " 
 
 They laughed a little, and once more turned back. 
 
 " Now I'm going to tell you one or two short 
 lies, that will last just to Fourth avenue," Harry de 
 clared ; " and then we'll cut across the park. Ev 
 erything is so pleasant to-day." 
 
 "Yes, isn't it?" 
 
 " Hem ! Once there was a man. Let's see, I 
 guess he lived in Maine and had the mumps. Lots 
 of lies originate in Maine, but I don't know that I 
 ever heard a mump lie. Anyhow, there was a terri 
 ble epidemic of mumpery, and a man in Hancock 
 county put his head out of the window. The cold 
 air caused his face to swell very rapidly, and when 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 139 
 
 he tried to draw his head back within the house he 
 could not. He was finally rescued from the out 
 side by means of a fire ladder. This incident seems 
 almost incredible, but it must, in fairness, be said 
 that the window was a very small one." 
 
 " Why do you always say ' Hem ! ' when you 
 begin ? " 
 
 "I don't know. Custom, I suppose. It's the 
 way the professors do. Here's Third avenue. Now 
 I'll tell a little lie, just one block long. Hem ! 
 Kansas has often been called the Sunflower State, 
 a title more than ever appropriate, since the fore 
 man upon Gov. Motley's farm constructed his sun 
 flower clock. Choosing an enormous sunflower, he 
 attached to its drooping head a tiny cornstalk, not 
 more than ten feet long. About the plant he drew 
 on the earth a circle, and divided it into twenty-four 
 parts, each of which was subdivided for minutes and 
 seconds. And now, as the faithful plant, from dawn 
 till dusk, eyes its fierce lord, the cornstalk pointer 
 moves about the dial, indicating the time. The sun 
 flower clock can also be used as a stop-watch, to 
 time races, by holding over it a big umbrella, which 
 checks the revolution upon the instant, when the 
 time, to a fraction of a second, may be read off upon 
 the dial." 
 
140 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 They turned northwest, across Madison Square. 
 Once, by the fountain, where the children played, 
 he squeezed her hand. 
 
 Then her mood changed little by little, and her 
 doubts began to come back to plague her. The ex 
 altation had been too great to last, and self-ques 
 tioning succeeded certainty. 
 
 " Oh, Harry ! " she breathed at last, after a long 
 silence, " I am sure we shall never be happy to 
 gether ! " 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " Oh, I tremble for the future. There was a 
 time when I could have loved you, for I thought 
 you were just a nice, simple, handsome clean- 
 minded gentleman, don't you know. But but 
 somehow you've changed, or I have learned to 
 know you better. I shrink from linking myself 
 with your glittering intellectuality. I know that 
 women who marry geniuses never are happy, 
 and" 
 
 " Well, did anyone ever see such a goose ? " de 
 manded the now thoroughly exasperated Harry. 
 
 " Then [it was true all those horrid things you 
 told me ! " she demanded, turning upon him like a 
 flash, her big, brown eyes blazing. " A pretty opin 
 ion you must have of me ! Harry Porter, no man 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 14! 
 
 was ever loved as I once loved you; but I will never 
 speak to you again in my life never ! " 
 
 Then she fled up the steps of her own home, and 
 banged the door. 
 
 After a minute's perplexity, Harry followed, rang 
 the bell, and asked for her. 
 
 The servant, with a grin ill-repressed for he had 
 witnessed the whole comedy through the sidelight 
 of the hall door said: " Miss Ann is not at home, 
 sir." 
 
 Harry rushed away to Eckels's house, but that 
 worthy also was out. 
 
 " He looked as if he wanted to kill somebody," 
 said the waitress and door-maid of the boarding- 
 house, describing Harry's appearance as he asked 
 the whereabouts of his friend and adviser. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 BACK TO THE SOIL. 
 
 ECKELS was not at home. 
 
 He had accepted an invitation to visit Parker 
 Adams's model farm in Peapack, New Jersey, and 
 had passed the night in the attic of a brown, old 
 farm-house, where the rain of late April pattered in 
 a sudden shower at 4 A.M., rousing him from sleep. 
 
 " I have at last discovered," he said to Adams at 
 the breakfast table, " the reason why it is so hard to 
 get up in the morning, and it is one that ought to 
 interest you farmers. It seems that so much Ameri 
 can wheat, corn, and gold have been taken to the 
 old continent, that that side of the world has be 
 come heavier than ours. The resultant shifting of 
 the earth's centre of gravity further from our side 
 causes an excess of rarefaction in the American 
 air, which, in turn, makes it difficult to undertake 
 severe exertion. Every sailor knows that from 
 Liverpool to New York the voyage is uphill; but 
 the fact has never before been satisfactorily ex 
 plained." 
 
 " Tell that to the Doc. when he comes," said 
 Adams. 
 
 142 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 143 
 
 "Yes, but, for Heaven's sake, don't call him 
 * Doc ' ! It's bad enough to be waked at 4, with 
 out being killed at 9." 
 
 Early in the forenoon Dr. Binninger, Tom Fen- 
 ton, Jim Hart, the returned miner, and Fraser, the 
 Canadian, came up and began inspecting the crops. 
 
 " Oh, this is very well; very well, indeed, for 
 Jersey," said Dr. Binninger, at last/' as they sat on 
 the fence by the cornfield, after their labors, smok 
 ing; " but nothing to what I have seen. In Gastley 
 County, Missouri, I once saw the corn growing to 
 such an unprecedented height, and the stalks so 
 exceptionally vigorous, that nearly every farmer 
 stacked up, for winter firewood, great heaps of corn 
 stalks, cut up into cord-wood length by power saws 
 run by the threshing engines. One man, Barney 
 Gregory, took advantage of the season to win a for 
 tune by preparing cornstalks for use as telegraph 
 poles. The modus operandi was as follows: Select 
 ing the most promising stalks, Barney removed the 
 ears while still green, and gave each stalk a daily 
 injection of dilute potash, made from wood-lye. 
 This tincture of tree, so to speak, absorbed into the 
 system, hardened the heart, or marrow, of the corn 
 until it was quite as tough as cottonwood, and con 
 siderably lighter. The stalks, when well painted, 
 
144 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 are expected to last twenty years. Of course, they 
 would not do for city poles, which have to carry a 
 network of wires, but they are ample for trolley- 
 posts, and for carrying three or four-wire, country 
 and suburban telephone and telegraph lines, at a 
 height of twenty-five feet." 
 
 11 What is one man's meat is another man's poi 
 son," said Fenton. " Fine growing weather, similar 
 to that which made Gregory's fortune in Missouri, 
 has come near ruining those of the Western Ne 
 braska farmers who raised pumpkins. Just as, by 
 all ordinary rules, the crop should have been ready 
 to house, a mysterious rot began to destroy the 
 great green globes glowing to yellow in the sun. 
 An examination by the chemists of the State Agri 
 cultural College, showed that the trouble was due 
 to the too rapid growth of the vines, which dragged 
 the pumpkins about after them, all over the fields, 
 until the pumpkins' lower cuticle, being worn out by 
 the abrasion, they succumbed easily to rot in the 
 bruised portion. Should another such year come, 
 the farmers will avoid a like catastrophe by provid 
 ing each pumpkin with a straw-lined nest, or a little 
 truck with casters. 
 
 " A good illustration of nature's bounty happened 
 some time ago in Doniphan County, Kansas," contin- 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 145 
 
 ued Fenton. " A seven-year-old daughter of James 
 Steele was sent, in the middle of the forenoon, to 
 carry a jug of switchel to the men, who were at work 
 near the middle of one of those vast Kansas corn 
 fields. The corn was about up to little Annie's 
 shoulders as she started, but as she went along it 
 rose and rose before her eyes, shooting out of the 
 soil under the magic influence of the sun and the 
 abundant moisture. Almost crazed with fear, she 
 hastened on, but before she could reach the men, the 
 stalks were waving above her head. The men were 
 threatened in a like manner, but by mounting a lit 
 tle fellow on a big man's shoulders, to act as a look 
 out, they managed to get out, when they promptly 
 borrowed a dog, to follow little Annie's trail. It 
 was not until late in the afternoon that they reached 
 her, where she lay, having cried herself to sleep, with 
 the tear-stains streaking her plump cheeks." 
 
 " The soil of some of the Southern California 
 counties is so rich as to become an actual detriment 
 to the farmer," observed Eckels. " In San Ber 
 nardino County, a farmer, named Jones, has been 
 forced entirely to abandon the culture of corn, be 
 cause the stalks, under the influence of the genial 
 sun, mild air, and mellow soil, shoot up into the air 
 so fast that they draw their roots after them ; when, 
 
146 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 of course, the plant dies, as a rule. Cases have been 
 known, however, where cornstalks thus uprooted, 
 and lifted into the air, have survived for some time 
 upon the climate alone." 
 
 "Why," said Dr. Binninger, "we used to have 
 the same trouble in Kentucky, but it was solved 
 long ago by burying a heavy stone under each corn 
 stalk, and wiring the stalk down to it. I have known 
 the price of stone to treble in one season in conse 
 quence of the purely agricultural demand." 
 
 They visited the pig-pen and revived the classic 
 narrative of the fat pig that was put in the bucket 
 and didn't really fill it, though accustomed to eat 
 the bucket full of swill three times daily ; and of 
 the lean pig, whose tail had to be tied in a knot to 
 prevent its crawling through the fence ; they told 
 about the cow that developed such an unnatural ap 
 petite for gnawing wood, that she gave, instead of 
 milk, turpentine, shoe-pegs, baseball bats, and bun 
 dles of laths. 
 
 " And talking of cows," said Fenton, "there is a 
 farmer in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, who had a valu 
 able cow die recently from mysterious causes. A vet 
 erinary surgeon made the necessary autopsy and dis 
 covered in the animal's stomach, a black-snake over 
 four feet long, and a number of small ones, who ran 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 away so rapidly that only thirty-two could 
 
 be killed. It is supposed 
 
 that the mother snake 
 
 made her nest in the 
 
 animal's stomach by 
 
 crawling therein while 
 
 the cow was obliged, by a heavy cold 
 in the head, to sleep with her mouth 
 open." 
 
 " That a cow can fly seems to be be 
 yond the limits of probability," said 
 Adams, " yet the case seems to be well 
 authenticated of one of my Jerseys of 
 light and athletic build, which came 
 pretty near it. She jumped her fence 
 time and again. After each offense I 
 built the fence higher, until it had 
 
148 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 reached an altitude of twenty-seven feet. At this 
 point I resolved to watch all night, and was rewarded 
 by seeing the animal break off a large number of 
 tree boughs and pile them in a neat heap near the 
 fence. Then, running back a little distance, she 
 came on, pellmell, turning a complete somersault be 
 fore reaching the heap, and alighting on her back on 
 top of it. The next moment, she was bounced up 
 from the elastic boughs like a jumper from a spring 
 board, and went over the fence hands down. I 
 have since thought that an occurrence like this 
 might have suggested the story of the cow that 
 jumped over the moon." 
 
 They watched the farm hands at work, while Dr. 
 Binninger was reminded of rats. 
 
 "The Iowa rats, suh," he said, " are most extra 
 ordinary. The farmers are accustomed to lock 
 their grain in iron safes, but the rats circumvent 
 even this precaution by gnawing in gangs of three, 
 gang number one refiling number two's teeth, while 
 number three gnaws. These rats sell readily at thir 
 ty-seven cents each to well drivers, who use the 
 teeth for pointing their diamond drills. It is calcu 
 lated that the rat-teeth drills do 16 per cent, better 
 work than the ordinary variety." 
 
 One of the hands at work with his hoe, a light 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 149 
 
 mulatto of indescribably ragged raiment, had hoed 
 up near enough to the group to hear the last words 
 of the speaker. All at once dropping on his knees, 
 he raised his clasped hands toward Dr. Binninger 
 and revealed under his broad hat the fear-palsied 
 features of Henry the new waiter, of Henry the 
 runaway boy from the baiter shop, of Henry the 
 latest addition to the force of the Peapack farm. 
 
 " Oh, forgive me, Massa ! " he moaned, " lemme 
 go dis time 'n' I'll go furder away w'ere yo'll neber 
 see me no mo'. 'Deed I will, boss." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " demanded Adams, leaping 
 off the fence and striding up to the frightened 
 youth. 
 
 " Oh, don' let 'im hit me, boss ! I dun g'way. 
 I didn't know dishuh farm belong to a Trab'ler 
 man." 
 
 " What is the trouble, Henry ? " asked Eckels in 
 his kindliest tones. " Come, my boy, no one is go 
 ing to touch you, so long as you behave yourself. 
 Now what is it ?" 
 
 "W'y suh, w'en I was in de club, I arsk Mist' 
 Binninger wha's rest ob story 'bout de ossifer pig, 
 an' he tol' me, 'n' 'en he said any one heerd one his 
 stories 'n' didn' belieb' 'em, he was goin' to kill dat 
 man, sho' nuff, like an' ol' school Southern gemman. 
 
150 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 'N' he come to the barber shop 'n' 'e tell stories 
 'bout wigs 'n' 'possums ; ? n' 'e come yere 'n' tell 
 stories 'bout rats. 'Tain't my fault, Mist' Adams. 
 Ise belieb 'mos' anyt'in ; but yo' des keep dat 
 man 'way from me. Da's all." 
 
 " Henry ! said Dr. Binninger and his rich, full 
 voice was as soft as a woman's, and all his pompous 
 manner gone ; " you needn't believe you see day 
 light if you don't want to. As for me, I'm the 
 d dest old liar that ever left Kentucky. Henry, 
 a true Southern gentleman of the old school is the 
 best friend a nigger ever had. Gentlemen," ad 
 dressing the rest, " leave me here with Henry, and I B 
 reckon we can arrange matters to live on the same 
 earth hereafter." 
 
 " Good-hearted old duck, that Binninger," said 
 John Hart. " Say, won't any one but the Doc get 
 anything to eat when the boy is back in the club." 
 
 While sitting on the porch, waiting for the doctor, 
 Tom Fenton told about the success of Mrs. Eph. 
 Dorgan in the poultry business, which, as the reader 
 will remember, was so long the wonder of the people 
 of Pamphila, Delaware, where she lives. Her supply 
 of tender poultry for the Wilmington market seemed 
 to be inexhaustible, yet she never had any lack of 
 remaining hens to lay eggs. It won't be so in fu 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 151 
 
 ture.- The neighbors have got on to Mrs. Dorgan's 
 trained hen-hawks. For some time she has had a 
 number of these in her service, ranging the country 
 round, and picking up stray chickens to bring home 
 to her.^.^0f course the losers never suspected hu 
 man agency, and could have no knowledge that the 
 hawks merely brought their prey to the Dorgan 
 coops. Every night, Mrs. Dorgan used to play 
 "Work While the Day is Dawning," to the hawks on 
 the cottage melodeon, and it was this curious cus 
 tom which led to the discovery of her nefarious 
 business. 
 
 " By the way," said Adams, " see those potatoes 
 over there ? They're animal and alphabet potatoes." 
 
 " Animal potatoes ? " 
 
 "Yes. A rare variety. The story of their de 
 velopment is very curious, and is known to but few. 
 The ' animal crackers,' which are sold in groceries 
 to the delight of children, suggested the idea to 
 Elmer Griffin of Palaeopolis, Indiana. Mr. Griffin's 
 four-year-old son was just learning his letters at po 
 tato planting time last spring, so Griffin cut with 
 care twenty-six different forms of potato chips, each 
 resembling a letter of the alphabet, besides others 
 in the rude outlines of various animals Last fall 
 he harvested his first crop of alphabet and animal 
 
152 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 potatoes ; they delighted Griffin's boy greatly, and 
 he is accustomed before eating his potatoes to spell 
 with them simple words, such as 'a-t at'<c-a-t 
 cat ' and the like, picking out, at the same time, the 
 animal represented. Griffin has sold $3,167.15 worth 
 of alphabet and animal potatoes at a fancy price, 
 just fof seed, and I have the finest patch of them in 
 New Jersey." 
 
 " Man modifies nature," said Fenton, " all along 
 the line. There is a spider in Brunswick, Maine, 
 which can write. It is supposed to be in love, and 
 has woven into its web the initials ' W. K.' and ' W. 
 H.' surmounted by a bleeding heart transfixed with 
 Cupid's arrow and a dove. By the way, speaking of 
 the tender passion, what's became of Harry Porter ? 
 Why didn't he come up to-day ? " 
 
 "?I heard that he was around last night with blood 
 in his eye, looking for Eckels. Speak up, Jack; 
 what have you been doing to turn the path of true 
 love into a corduroy road ? " 
 
 "Oh, Lord!" groaned Eckels. "I don't feel 
 very well to-day ! I I have troubles of my own. 
 I have a bad cough. I what can be the matter 
 with the young idiot now ? " 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 NEMESIS OVERTAKES JOHN ECKELS. 
 
 JOHN ECKELS was staring moodily into the fire in 
 the big assembly-room of the Travelers' Club. He 
 was already attired in the festive garb of evening, 
 although it was not yet 6. It was the date fixed 
 for the quarterly Ladies' Night at the club, and 
 Eckels had not spirit enough to take any unneces 
 sary steps, between up and down town. 
 
 The party from Peapack came in, noisy and jubi 
 lant, discussing the insect pests which make a farm 
 er's life unhappy. 
 
 " This is the season when tales of cutworms and 
 other agricultural trials are in order," said Tom 
 Fenton. "And never before this year have such 
 pests been so numerous or so big.' A Kentucky 
 farmer, the other day, dug up a bushel of dirt to 
 ascertain precisely how many cutworms there were 
 in it. Carefully sifting the dirt and laying it to one 
 side, while the cutworms were measured by them 
 selves, he presently ascertained that he had just 
 half a bushel of clear dirt left, and rather over a 
 bushel and a quarter of cutworms. This seems a 
 surprising result considering that he had only a 
 
154 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 bushel of both to start with ; but the sifting opera 
 tion took time enough to permit the worms to grow 
 from a half bushel to one bushel and a half. 
 
 "Among worms," Fenton went on, " which have 
 no conscience, there is no law but the survival of 
 the fittest. Nevertheless, there is a rude sort of honor 
 even among grasshoppers, as any one would agree 
 who had witnessed the extraordinary grass-hopper 
 tournament at Napa, California, recently. Upon 
 a bare strip of ground, from which everything green 
 had been eaten, a hundred grasshoppers tugged 
 along a single luscious cabbage leaf. Presently one 
 of them drew a long mark in the dirt, and from this, 
 in succession, the grasshoppers jumped, the mark 
 where each landed being kept with scrupulous care. 
 Three trials were allowed to each contestant, after 
 which the victor began munching the cabbage leaf, 
 while the others retired with derisive ' oh's ' and 
 'ah's ! ' The naturalist who observed this curious 
 scene measured the winning jump, which was 7 feet 
 11% inches. California grasshoppers are very ath 
 letic." 
 
 " Hem ! " broke in Dr. Binninger : "the shrewd 
 and thrifty air of Connecticut naturally encourages 
 intellect, even in the animal kingdom. In other 
 states the potato-bugs sit around on the hills, wait- 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 155 
 
 ing for the plants to come up. In Connecticut they 
 evade the farmer and his paris-green in a very clever 
 way. Near Moosup, a colony of potato-bugs this 
 year took possession of a waste bit of land and 
 planted their own potatoes. The seed they stole 
 from a farmer who left a bag of seed potatoes in 
 his field over night, gnawing each potato into sev 
 eral pieces, so that a gang of eight bugs and a fore 
 man could roll it away. The patch they planted was 
 about half an acre in extent, and the bugs kept it 
 nicely weeded, until the plants began to appear above 
 the ground, and then they were in high feather, un 
 til their fat pickings were accidentally discovered by 
 a wandering mill hand. Then the owner of the land, 
 unfeelingly, appropriated the potatoes, which are es 
 timated to yield 500 bushels to the acre, and poi 
 soned off the industrious bugs." 
 
 '< There are many wonderful things to be seen in 
 the far West," said Donald Fraser, who had just 
 been elected a member of the Travelers'. "In the 
 wonderful climate of California not only plants, but 
 animals, attain a size and vigor elsewhere un- 
 equaled. A peculiar instance of this Brobdingna- 
 gian tendency is found in the giant jack-rabbits of 
 San Mateo. These rabbits have, even within the 
 memory of white men, increased immensely in size 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 until they now average the dimensions of a New 
 foundland dog. With their greater size they de 
 velop considerable fierceness, and often attack, in 
 the open field, men who are seeking to deprive them 
 of food, by harvesting the cabbages. Comminuted 
 fractures of the tibia, fibula and femur are common 
 results of a farm-hand's encounter with a jack-rab 
 bit. The rabbit's only means of defense is to kick 
 with his great hind feet, but this is by no means to 
 be despised." 
 
 " I like always to consider insect life from the 
 point of view of the scientist," said Dr. Binninger. 
 " Bees and ants are especially interesting subjects 
 of entomological study. At the best, bees have 
 never been noted for chronological accuracy, though 
 very industrious and masters of isometry, equian- 
 gulation and architectonics. It was to the ant that 
 the sluggard was advised to go for an object lesson 
 in wisdom. Particularly, no doubt, to the so-called 
 ' farmer ants ' of northern Mexico, who are distin 
 guished among all their tribe by their passionate 
 devotion to tilling the soil. These ants have de 
 veloped tiny cereals growing on stalks a hundredth 
 part of an inch tall. They dig and level patches of 
 ground, they sow the grain carefully, saved from 
 last year's seed, they watch, water and tend it. 
 
158 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 When the fields are white with harvest, they nibble 
 down the stalks, place the grain heads in broad 
 leaves, and thresh out the kernels by pounding them 
 with grains of sand. The grain is then stored away 
 in underground granaries for the winter. By thus 
 providing a variety in their diet from the monoto 
 nous mule, mining inspector and jack-rabbit in a 
 state of decomposition, these ants have become 
 much larger and stronger, as well as wiser, than 
 those of more northern climes." 
 
 " The wholeJWest is full of marvels," said Fraser, 
 " which are unsuspected by the staid dwellers in the 
 prosy East. There is, for instance, a peculiar variety 
 of snake, living near Las Vegas, New Mexico, known 
 by the Spanish-American residents of the territory, 
 as the flagellantes, from a strange custom it has of 
 doing penance for misdeeds. When one of these 
 snakes has, in unrighteous anger, bitten another, he 
 is called into the presence of a solemn jury of his 
 peers, and, so far as naturalists can see, receives a 
 fair trial. If no justification appears, the leading 
 snake comparable either to the judge or foreman 
 of the jury, or sheriff hands the culprit a branch 
 of the green mesquit, 'horrid with thorns,' as old 
 Virgil would say. Grasping this frightful weapon 
 in its mouth, the guilty snake flogs its own bleeding 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 159 
 
 sides until the whip falls from its nerveless jaws. 
 Then the surgeon snakes roll the expiating sufferer 
 up in green leaves moistened with spittle, which 
 soon heals the wounds by excluding the air. This 
 ceremony has been witnessed by more than one old 
 hunter, and has caused this variety of snake to be 
 held in superstitious regard." 
 
 " The East has wonders quite as great," said Par 
 ker Adams. " Fond mothers of Wallingford, Con 
 necticut, desiring to impress upon their male offspring 
 the lesson that one should not bolt his food, are now 
 enforcing it by the sad case of a black-snake, in the 
 Stony Hill region, which recently ran upon a nest 
 of hen's eggs, while in a terribly hungry condition. 
 The famished snake bolted the eggs whole, not 
 knowing that they had been brooded upon by their 
 fond mother until they were near the hatching point. 
 The owner of the hen, attracted by the fowl's angry 
 screaming, came up presently, and found the snake 
 writhing in convulsions, with an expression upon its 
 face, however, that was rather of laughter than of 
 pain. As the man came up, the snake, with a last 
 convulsive wriggle, gave up the ghost. An imme 
 diate autopsy was held, by the aid of an ax, and 
 eleven downy little chicks rolled, peeping, out of 
 the snake's interior. They had hatched out in that 
 
l6o THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 warm retreat, and by scratching the snake's stom 
 ach, had tickled it so that it expired in a fit of Ho 
 meric laughter." 
 
 " There are escapes as wonderful as that snake's 
 demise," said Fraser. " If you '11 pardon another 
 reference to the West, I should like to relate a little 
 incident in the life of a western dog. Bob Jones of 
 Colcannon, Colorado, has a climbing dog, which is, 
 probably, the only living creature that has ever fallen 
 a thousand feet and emerged alive. Scamp that's 
 the dog was gamboling about on the edge of the 
 Grand Canyon, when it saw a butterfly, and, in 
 snapping at the airy, flitting creature, lost its foot 
 ing, and went down kerplulp. By devious ways, 
 and with the expenditure of several hours' time, 
 Jones reached the bottom of the canyon, when, 
 after a long search, he was rewarded by hearing a 
 plaintive whine from the bottom of a deep ' well- 
 hole,' drilled in ages past by whirling and swirling 
 water. Here was Master Scamp, alive, but subdued 
 in spirit. He owed his escape to the sudden descent 
 into the hole, which he exactly fitted, thus forming 
 underneath him a cushion of compressed air. This 
 principle, it is well known, is used in the mechanism, 
 which catches the recoil of cannon, and in the cup 
 at the bottom of the elevator shaft. 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. l6l 
 
 " Another Western wonder, I might add. Miik 
 farmers are often accused of milking the pump- 
 handle, but Milt Wiltshire of Gadena, Nebraska, 
 openly avows that he does so, and is blamed by none. 
 Upon Wiltshire's farm there has been discovered a 
 subterranean vein of perfect mineral milk, responding 
 thoroughly to every chemical and gustatorial test. 
 Babies thrive so upon the milk that he is able to 
 charge an extra price per quart, and as the supply 
 is large, Wiltshire has in his well * the potentiality 
 of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice,' as Dr. 
 Johnson said of Mrs. Thrale's beer vats." 
 
 " It has often puzzled me to think what a plain 
 farmer, suddenly enriched, could find to do -with so 
 much money," said Adams. 
 
 " I understand," said Fraser, "that Wiltshire in 
 tends to start a new monthly magazine. v 
 
 " Oh, in that case " 
 
 " The relation of the wonders of the West could 
 never be exhausted," said Fraser; but if you'll 
 pardon me the addition of a single instance, I will 
 tell you of the new stand bought by Mrs. Brown of 
 Defiance, Ohio. It came from Grand Rapids, where 
 they make furniture pretty quickly, out of green 
 wood. She set the stand in a big window, where it 
 was exposed to the direct rays of the sun, and pres- 
 
l62 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 ently it sprouted and began to grow. Noticing this, 
 Mrs. Brown placed each leg of the stand in a pot of 
 water, and watered it assiduously every day; and 
 she has now a fine dining-table, with extra leaves to 
 insert when she has company." 
 
 " Eckels ! oh, Eckels ! " shouted Adams ; " wake 
 up and contribute something to the general fund 
 of information. Rise, and give your experience, 
 brother ! " 
 
 A wan and dejected countenance looked up from 
 the corner by the big fire, and fell again; the chin 
 upon the broad expanse of shirt-bosom, its only 
 support. He looked up again, when Harry Porter 
 came banging into the room. 
 
 "I want to see you, Eckels," he said; and there 
 was a lurking devil in his sneer. 
 
 " Now little Jacky's going to catch it," said Ad 
 ams, comfortably nestling into the big chair Eckels 
 left with a sigh. 
 
 And he did. 
 
 ''You're a pretty adviser ! " Harry began, when 
 the two had vanished from the busier scene. 
 
 "Yes," said Eckels, " I am." 
 
 " I tried your scheme faithfully, didn't I ? " 
 
 "Yes, you did." 
 
 " Well, I look as if it had succeeded, don't I ? " 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 163 
 
 " No, I can't say that you do." 
 
 "That's strange ! Yes, it succeeded ! Oh, yes ! 
 She said I was too beastly intellectual to tie to. 
 That's what a fellow gets by straining his^intellect to 
 tell lies and extemporize painfully learned epigrams." 
 
 " Strange, how a woman can misjudge a man ! " 
 
 " Yes, isn't it ? By the way, how is your own 
 business coming on ? Not that I care a d ." 
 
 " Oh, about like yours." 
 
 " Singular ! This wise man that knows all about 
 the female sex can't run a courtship on his own 
 plans and specifications. I think I was a blamed 
 idiot to listen to you." 
 
 " You were, my boy. See here, Harry, you feel 
 sore, don't you ? Well, go ahead ! Keep on kick 
 ing ! It relieves your feelings, and doesn't hurt 
 mine a bit. I'm in the dumps so far that you can't 
 drive me any deeper by jumping on me. In fact, 
 it relieves my misery by imparting to my misspent 
 life a taste of variety. Go ahead. You help make 
 things a little more endurable/' 
 
 " Why, Jack," said Harry, " what's the matter ? 
 Tell me all about it ! I don't blame you for what 
 has happened. I presume your plan was better than 
 my execution 'of it. Anyhow, that's past. What 
 went wrong in your case ? " 
 
164 . THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 " Oh, not much. She simply opened her eyes 
 very wide, and said, she'd never considered me in 
 the light of a suitor. I overdid the studied neglect 
 act, just as you overdid the intellectual lay. The 
 trouble with me is, I'm too confounded smart. 
 And now I get it in the neck. Serves me right." 
 
 " True, oh, philosoph. Are the sisters going to 
 be here to-night ? " 
 
 " I don't know. Go ask Langdon." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 LA BELLE DAME JAMAIS SANS MERCI. 
 
 THE Ladies' Nights of the Travelers' Club were 
 such enjoyable occasions that no one need suppose 
 that Miss Copeland and Miss Ann Copeland at 
 tended, on the night in question, in the hope of see 
 ing Eckels and Harry Porter. Indeed they had no 
 particular reason to expect either gentleman to be 
 present. Probably they assured themselves that 
 they hoped Eckels and Harry would have the good 
 taste to keep away. In their hearts but who knows 
 the heart of woman ? Certainly not women. 
 
 Mrs. Langdon had not seen Dr. Binninger since 
 he dined at her house, and the sight of his expansive 
 form, swelling with pride as he officiated as chairman 
 of the reception committee, reminded her of a remark 
 he had made on the former occasion. So when the 
 enlarged party was gathered in the big assembly- 
 room for the story telling, with which Ladies' Night 
 at the Travelers' always closed, after the early birds 
 had flown, and the chairs were drawn about the fire, 
 she said: " Dr. Binninger, what is a * sidewinder ' ?" 
 
 " Bless me, I don't know." 
 
 "Why, you must. It was you, who said they 
 165 
 
l66 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 were among the most interesting of American snakes, 
 and then you forgot to tell about them." 
 
 " Oh, yes; the sidewinders. Why, of course! 
 Bless me, my dear Madame! I'd forgotten all 
 about them. I must be getting old and forgetful. 
 Sidewinders? Why, naturally! Hem! The horned 
 rattlesnake, or ' sidewinder ' of California," he went 
 on after sparring for a time until he collected his 
 thoughts, " is a strange creature, named for its pe 
 culiar gait. Its peculiarity of locomotion came to 
 my notice in this manner: Gid Marsh has a bonan 
 za farm in Tuolomne county, and during the season 
 of 1879, some of his men killed some of these side 
 winders. The relatives of the dead snakes, after 
 attending to the obsequies, ranged themselves in a 
 line atone side of Marsh's immense wheat-field, and, 
 at the signal of command from the oldest and larg 
 est sidewinder, they swept like a vast scythe across 
 the field, leveling every blade as if a storm had 
 swept them. The damage was estimated at $579, - 
 813.71. Since then I have noticed that the side 
 winder invariably travels laterally, not longitudinally. 
 
 " In the face of such singular instances of con 
 certed action," Dr. Binninger went on, " who can 
 deny the essential identity between what we call in 
 animals, instinct and in ourselves, reason ? So many 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 167 
 
 instances are known of the imitative tendencies of 
 animals that one sometimes wonders why they have 
 chosen examples so vile. Bob Jones, a prominent 
 saloon-keeper whom I used to know in Louisville, 
 has a dog, for instance, which is not only fond of 
 beer, but has taught his chums the same taste, for a 
 purpose which now appears. One day a tin pail full 
 of beer was given to Spot, who carefully lugged it 
 away to the woodshed, instead of lapping it up at 
 once. Investigation revealed the fact that he had 
 placed the tin on a board raised upon two blocks to 
 form a bar. Ranged on the other side were half a 
 dozen dogs, who had come with bones, rags and bits 
 of biscuit to buy a drink. So many laps were allowed 
 in return for each article, and the other dogs kept 
 coming. By and by Spot, seeing his tin nearly 
 empty, dashed back into the saloon with it, dipped 
 it full of water from a pail on the floor and returned. 
 But the first dog that tasted of the diluted beverage, 
 raised a howl of protest, whereupon the customers 
 attacked Spot in a body, and not only thrashed him 
 roundly, but took away all his riches." 
 
 A dusky form glided in front of the circle to cast 
 fresh logs upon the waning coals, and the gleam of 
 the white teeth in Henry's smile as he looked upon 
 the doctor, showed that he had no more fears of the 
 
l68 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 consequences of disbelief. As Dr. Binninger laid a 
 caressing hand upon the boy's shoulder, he fairly 
 beamed with happiness. 
 
 " That's a good boy, Henry," said the burly nar 
 rator; "keep a good fire. We're not ready to go 
 yet. This reminds me of the great fires we had over 
 in the Swiss mountains last winter. Some of you 
 may not have noticed that the good old American 
 sport of sliding down hill in the * belly-buster ' style, 
 beloved of the small boy, has been introduced into 
 that country. I am, myself, an honorary member of 
 a daring club of Italian mountaineers, who have es 
 tablished a toboggan course from the Matterhorn 
 peak southeastward. It was from the Matterhorn that 
 Hadow and Croz lost their lives in a straightaway 
 fall of 4,000 feet when the mountain was first scaled 
 by Whymper. On the Italian side the jump is only 
 about 2,700 feet, which is taken flying; the tobog 
 gans are provided with a complicated arrangement of 
 springs to break the fall, and life is sustained during 
 the flight, through space, by sucking pure oxygen 
 through a tube from a magazine under the seat. 
 The tremendous speed gained by the toboggan dur 
 ing the descent and on the slope below, carries the 
 sportsman right on and over the gently rounded 
 summit of Monte Rosa. When ladies take the slide 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 169 
 
 they generally use sleds provided with parachutes, 
 which make the precipitous part of the descent safe 
 and pleasant. To get back to the starting point in 
 volves a railroad detour of 117 miles and two days' 
 climbing from Zermatt, so that one can't easily en 
 joy the experience oftener than once a week." 
 
 " Can't you tell some stories to match that, Mr. 
 Porter ? " said Miss Curtis, the pale girl in blue, who 
 had come with the wife of an elderly member. 
 
 She smiled her sweetest smile as she said it, but 
 Harry groaned inwardly, and Ann Copeland ground 
 her teeth in ineffectual rage, not so much at the re 
 quest as at the smile. 
 
 " I can," said Harry, manfully, resisting an in 
 stant's inclination to run away, " but not even to 
 oblige you will I. I must beg to be excused. With 
 me such a story as you've just heard means a half 
 day's struggle with a pen, a painful effort to commit 
 the thing to memory and all that. So you see I 
 can't do anything extempore like this; but I'm a fine 
 listener. So I'll beg to remain in the background." 
 
 In retiring to the background, Harry by the merest 
 accident had taken a chair, which stood next to that 
 occupied by Ann Copeland. 
 
 " Yes, it's all true, Nannette," he soon found oc 
 casion to say to her under cover of the laughter 
 
I/O THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 evoked by one of Adams's best tales. "I'm just 
 such a fool, Lord help me! Can't we can't we 
 patch up things between us somehow?" 
 
 " And you took all that trouble to please me ? " 
 she murmured. " I I've completely forgotten 
 what I said to you the other night." 
 
 " So have I, dear ; I fancy you never said it at 
 all." 
 
 " I know I didn't." 
 
 Fraser was relating the wonderful escape of a 
 bicycle policeman, and had reached that point in 
 the narrative where the pursued scorcher dropped 
 his wheel, and ran up the stairway of a tenement. 
 
 " The policeman followed right upstairs, without 
 dismounting, until he came to the stairs leading to 
 the roof scuttle," he went on. " While he was 
 climbing these, and dragging the bicycle after him, 
 the thief got a good start. On the flat roof the 
 policeman mounted again, and overhauled his man 
 just at the end of the block. Such was their im 
 petus, however, that both went over the parapet to 
 the street, a distance of fifty feet, but as they fell 
 on top of the bicycle, the pneumatic tires saved 
 them both from injury." 
 
 "But, after all," said Dr. Binninger, " that was 
 nothing to a narrow escape I once witnessed down 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 I/I 
 
 in the Indian Territory. An Indian woman, while 
 at work, had left her baby lying on a blanket As 
 I was riding by, an eagle swooped down out of the 
 sky, and, grasping the pappoose in his iron talons, 
 rapidly flew away. I stood aghast. I had no 
 
 weapon save a revolver, whose range was too short 
 for the work. Besides, I was afraid of hitting the 
 child. However, up dashed an Indian brave on the 
 run, and hastily aiming his rifle at the flying bird, 
 fired twice, and down it came with a " 
 
1/2 jTHE BOOK OF LIES, 
 
 " But wasn't the child smashed in falling ? " asked 
 Nina Markham, wide-eyed. 
 
 " Down came the eagle slowly, flapping desper 
 ately with his crippled wings. The Indian had 
 broken each with a shot, so that the eagle fell, in 
 deed, but very slowly, struggling to the earth. The 
 child was only slightly shaken up." 
 
 " And yet Cooper says that Indians are not as 
 good shots as white men," said Mrs. Langdon. 
 
 " And they are not. I neglected to say that the 
 marksman was a half-breed. His eyes, arms, and 
 judgment were all white. His legs were the Indian 
 half of him." 
 
 " I like the clear glow of this fire," said Langdon, 
 after a pause, during which every one sat seeing 
 castles in the flickering light. " Fire is swift decay. 
 I once knew a peculiar case, which really seemed to 
 be a cross between phosphorescence and combus 
 tion, having all the quality of the former and the 
 brilliance of the latter. The phosphorescent effect 
 of fungi upon the old bark of decaying trees is well 
 known ; but it is not so thoroughly understood that 
 there is in California and Nevada a rare tree, known 
 as the 'witch tree,' from the way in which every 
 limb, twig and leaf stands outlined in the darkest 
 night by some peculiar quality of the bark. A large 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 173 
 
 tree of this species is estimated to furnish illumina 
 tion equivalent to 100 electric lights of standard 
 sixteen-candle power variety, and a few small towns 
 in the foothills have planted witch trees on street 
 corners, as an economical means of municipal illu 
 mination." 
 
 "Do you believe in luck?" asked Adams of no 
 one in particular. 
 
 "I do," said Harry Porter, promptly, and then he 
 blushed and wished he had not spoken. 
 
 " I am myself," said Adams, hastily, to cover the 
 young man's confusion, " a thorough believer in 
 signs, omens, and hoodoos. I have seen too many in 
 stances to doubt. Many railroad men have such a 
 prejudice against the number thirteen that most 
 roads skip that numeral in numbering cars or en 
 gines. There was a No. 13 freight car on the 
 M. K. and Q., however, until the cyclone came which 
 terminated its career. The path of the storm was 
 very narrow, which, of course, only made its 
 violence so much the greater. It came across the 
 track where a long freight train was running, and 
 ripped No. 13 out of the line like a feather. None 
 of the other cars felt more than an ordinarily high 
 wind. Indeed, the absence of No. 13 was not at 
 once noted. In sailing away, it jerked together the 
 
174 THE BOOK OF LIES. 
 
 cars before and behind it, when the coupling links, 
 which had been melted by the rapidity with which 
 they had been broken, were welded together again 
 as they cooled, leaving the train as safe as ever, 
 but one car short. Some farmers' boys saw the car as 
 it went off to leeward, but its irons and timbers were 
 probably fused to ashes, by impact with the at 
 mosphere ; as no trace of it was ever seen. 
 
 " There is good luck as well as bad," he went on. 
 " I suppose you all know that the good old days in 
 South Africa, when a man could make a fortune easily, 
 are gone, never to return. Nowadays the money is 
 made in London by speculators, and there is no op 
 portunity for such coups and coops as laid the 
 foundations of Carney Carnatto's fortune of $1,500,- 
 000,000. Carnatto went into the Witwatersrand re 
 gion in 1877 with no capital save a dozen hens, a 
 skillet, and a little pepper and salt. With these and 
 other stuff, purchased from time to time as money 
 came in, Carnatto opened the Digger's Delight res 
 taurant. Whenever he killed a tender broiler, of thir 
 teen years or so, Carnatto would deftly remove from 
 its crop the rough diamonds it had swallowed, as an 
 adjuvant to digestion. By the time the twelve hens 
 were all eaten, Carney had cleared up stones valued 
 at about ,7,390, los. 6d. With this capital he went 
 
THE BOOK OF LIES. 175 
 
 into the brokerage business, with the result which 
 all the world now knows." 
 
 " By the way," said Eckels, " the mention of 
 South Africa reminds me that we really must have 
 the rest of that story about Jameson at Krugers- 
 dorp." 
 
 There was a vibrant ring in Eckels' voice, and a 
 new elasticity in his manner. His eyes shone as 
 brightly as well, no one could see Miss Copeland's 
 for comparison, for she kept them modestly lowered. 
 They were sitting close together, a little withdrawn 
 from the light of the blazing fire. 
 
 " Yes, yes ; the Krugersdorp story," said half a 
 dozen voices, and all eyes were turned upon a quiet 
 man away at the end of the semi-circle. But there 
 was no reponse. 
 
 " Punch him somebody," said Eckels; "he's 
 dreaming over his thrilling experiences." 
 
 "Me?" said the returned miner, looking up ; "I 
 wasn't with Jameson at Krugersdorp." 
 
 THE END. 
 
BUSHY 
 
 A Thrilling Romance Founded on Fact. By CYNTHIA 
 M. WEST OVER. With 32 Full-page Illustrations by 
 J. A. WALKER. i2mo, Buckram, $1.25. A fine 
 character study. Pure in sentiment. Not a dull 
 chapter. 
 
 " The story is told with a rush and whirl that takes the reader off his feet: 
 Bushy is a fine character." Detroit Free Press. 
 
 " Bushy is the sturdiest little woman who ever brought sunshine to a min- s 
 er's camp. The book is intensely exciting from start to finish." Boston 
 Herald. 
 
 "With all her reality, Bushy's cleverness is phenomenal." Providence 
 Journal. 
 
 " Bushy has met with a most cordial reception in every section. Every 
 one who reads it recommends it with enthusiasm. The book is, indeed, fas 
 cinating." New York Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 "The story is full of life, vigor, movement, and there is no girl or boy no 
 parent, either, we hope who will not read it with delight." The Evangelist. 
 
 MASSASOIT 
 
 (NEW) 
 
 A Romantic Story of the Indians of New England. 
 By ALMA HOLMAN BURTON. Choice in language 
 and sentiment. Intensely interesting and full of 
 valuable information of Colonial days. Sixteen 
 Full-page Illustrations. I2mo, Special Cloth, $1,25. 
 
 TWO GOOD BOOKS FOR ANY LIBRARY. 
 
 THE MORSE COMPANY, 
 
 96 Fifth Ave,, New York.