100 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 1 



but space forbids; but a few illu»Lrati«jUo 

 that were worked over by our artist, Mr. 

 Murray, will give some idea of the charac- 

 ter of the Rambler and his writings as he 

 went abroad over the land with his pencil 

 and kodak. Sometimes, as will be seen, 

 fortune smiled on him, and sometimes he 

 "struck it rich;" but sometimes the cruel 

 hand of fate rested heavy on him. 



When he arrived in California he went 

 through the length and breadth of the land, 

 and everywhere he went he made friends. 

 His caricatures never offended, but, on the 

 contrary, they set forth some real conditions 

 as they actually existed, showing bee-keep- 

 ing as it was in the great 

 West. In my late trip 

 through California I ev- 

 erywhere heard kindly 

 words spoken of his writ- 

 ings; and I learned how 

 true and faithful all his 

 descriptions and portray- 

 als were. 



Perhaps it may seem a 

 little inappropriate to 

 put in an obituary comic 

 caricatures of the man 

 who has just left the ac- 

 tivities of this world; but 

 the natural humor of his 

 make-up were so inti- 

 mately interwoven with 

 his real life that they can 

 scarcely be separated 

 from his history. There 

 were hundreds and hun- 

 dreds of cartoons made, 

 but we reproduce only a 

 few of them as specimen 

 samples of his work after 

 it came through the hands 

 of Mr. Murray. The 

 Rambler would outline 

 the sketches, and Mur- 

 ray put them into form. 



Mr. Martin, althougli 

 he was known to the bee- 

 keeping readers as a 

 rambler, would between 

 times settle down in a 

 little cabin all alone by 

 himself in the mountain 

 or on the plain, where 

 he could manage from 

 300 to 400 colonies. He 

 seemed to love solitude 

 and nature. He loved 

 the bees; and when not 

 actually rambling he 

 would begetting in crops 

 of honey. Sometimes he 

 was successful, and some- 

 times not. Our artist has 

 shown him when the fates 

 favored him and when 

 they were against him. 



While in California he 

 wrote that illustrated 

 serial further depicting 

 California life entitled 



Bee-keeper Fred Anderson; or, the Mystery 

 of Crystal Mountain. It was a story of 

 no mean order, and elicited the praise of 

 hundreds of our readers. 



In the summer of 1901 Rambler wrote he 

 had another " itching,'' and that was to go 

 to Cuba, and asked what I thought of a 

 trip to gather up materials for Rambles. 

 I wrote back we should be very glad to 

 send him; but we feared the climate might 

 not be as agreeable to him there as in Cal- 

 ifornia; that, while the absolute tempera- 

 ture might not be greatly different, the hu- 

 midit3% mosquitoes, etc., might m^ke living 

 very uncomfortable if not dangerous. I 



- .J 



THE RAMBLER IN CARICATURE, 



